Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections

Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 5, 2016 Decided March 1, 2017
Full case name	Bethune-Hill, et al. v. Virginia State Board of Elections, et al.
Docket no.	15-680
Citations	580 U.S. ___ (more) 137 S. Ct. 788; 197 L. Ed. 2d 85
Case history
Prior	141 F. Supp. 3d 505 (E.D. Va. 2015); probable jurisdiction noted, 136 S. Ct. 2406 (2016).
Procedural	On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Subsequent	Ruling in favor of plaintiffs on remand, 326 F. Supp. 3d 128 (E.D. Va. 2018); appeal dismissed for lack of standing, Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, No. 18-281, 587 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 1945 (2019).
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Concurrence	Alito (in part)
Concur/dissent	Thomas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 580 U.S. ___ (2017), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court evaluated whether Virginia's legislature – the Virginia General Assembly – violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by considering racial demographics when drawing the boundaries of twelve of the state's legislative districts.^[1]

The case involves the maps drawn up by the Republican-controlled state legislative bodies to try to maintain their majority within the state. The initial decision by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found the 2011 redistricting map to be racially gerrymandered. The state challenged to the Supreme Court, which found the District Court had misapplied a standard and remanded portions of the case while affirming other parts of the decision. On rehearing, the District Court again found the redistricting to be unconstitutional, and the state of Virginia declined to challenge the result. A second petition for the Supreme Court was initiated by the Virginia House of Delegates, appealing the new District Court ruling. The Supreme Court accepted the petition but summarily ruled that the House of Delegates did not have sufficient standing to challenge in lieu of the state itself.