Nicholas Stephanopoulos

PlanScore PlanScore is a first-of-its-kind gerrymandering scoring service for new district plans, allowing users to upload maps and instantly receive projected data about their partisan consequences. You can al...

PlanScore has been updated to include 2024 scores for all congressional, state senate, and state house plans. Check it out:

planscore.org#!2024-stateh...

Victory in our New York VRA case against Newburgh!

The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the town lacks capacity to facially challenge the statute.

So our case continues to trial, and the dilution of the town's minority voters' influence may still be fixed.

www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decis...

What an irony it would be if Republicans, by initiating this unnecessary and unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war, ended up costing themselves the House.

Possibly of more interest to election law folks: The court really understood the various measures of partisan fairness. It correctly dismissed the state's preferred metrics, partisan bias and the mean-median difference, as inapplicable in an uncompetitive state like Utah.

My response to Sachs and Kleinfeld's article advocating parents voting for their children is now up.

My idea is to have young adults -- not parents -- vote on behalf of children due to their greater partisan and ideological similarity.

ndlawreview.org/give-young-a...

- More in the weeds, but the plaintiffs say the third Gingles precondition isn't satisfied in CA because minority-preferred candidates often win statewide races. But this analysis is always regional, not statewide, and the plaintiffs offer no more localized data.

- The plaintiffs want CA to return to its 2022 map. But their own argument is that 14 of that map's districts are unlawful racial gerrymanders! So that map is almost as bad, under the plaintiffs' theory, as the new map -- and can't be a valid remedy to any legal problem.

- Where's the plaintiffs' alternative map? CA's obvious defense is that its primary goal was partisan, not racial. Alexander says that, to refute a partisan defense, plaintiffs need a map that achieves the state's partisan aim without fixating on race. So where's their map?

The Complaint Filed By Republicans Against the Maps Created by California's Prop 50 Raising Racial Gerrymandering and Intentional Discrimination Claims Faces an Uphill Battle, Especially Given 2026 Ti... You can find the complaint here. The main argument in the case is that plaintiffs engaged in a racial gerrymander by making race the predominant factor in drawing district lines without s compelling r...

Some more problems with this CA racial gerrymandering claim:

- The suit's main evidence is some commentary by a mapmaker. But it's the LEGISLATURE'S intent that counts here, not what a line-drawer may have thought.

electionlawblog.org?p=152920

Mark Cuban Joins Legal Fight Against Dark Money and Super PACs Through a brief authored by the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Mark Cuban and 4 other billionaires argue in favor of Maine's SuperPAC law.

Nice story about the "billionaires' brief" filed by @electionclinic.bsky.social arguing on behalf of Mark Cuban and others that Maine's limit on Super PAC donations doesn't materially burden their speech and serves critical state interests.

www.sportico.com/law/analysis...

HLS's Election Law Clinic filed this amicus brief yesterday on behalf of Mark Cuban and other wealthy Americans, urging the First Circuit to uphold Maine's limit on Super PAC contributions.

Not all rich people want to distort elections in their favor!

www.hlselectionlaw.org/s/20251029_F...

To clarify, this lawsuit is under the NY Constitution, NOT the NY Voting Rights Act (which only applies to political subdivisions in NY). The suit argues that the NY Constitution should be read to adopt the same vote dilution standard as the NYVRA.

2. The SG's proposal would doom Section 2 suits not just in the South but everywhere. That's because there's always SOME political objective a new majority-minority district would compromise. If a state named the right goal, no plaintiff could satisfy the first Gingles prong.

More Concerns About the SG’s Proposal in Callais #ELB I’ve already discussed a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais (that plaintiffs’ demonstrative maps be required to achieve jurisdictions’ political objectives). Upon further reflection,...

Some more concerns about the SG's proposal in Callais:

1. At present, the first Gingles prong focuses on the availability of remedies. The SG's proposal would make it a probe for racial predominance -- the crux of the distinct theory of racial gerrymandering.

electionlawblog.org?p=152738

Competitive WI map

This is a nice story about our ongoing anti-competitive gerrymandering suit against Wisconsin's congressional map.

I like the demonstrative map in the piece -- look how much more competitive WI's districts could be!

urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/22/d...

Section 2’s Legislative History Refutes the SG’s Proposal #ELB I’ve previously noted a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais, under which demonstrative maps would have to achieve the enacted plan’s political goals in order to satisfy the first Ging...

Another problem with the SG's proposal in Callais is that it's refuted by Section 2's legislative history.

Lots of participants in the '82 hearings thought of the SG's idea that political goals excuse racial vote dilution. And they all believed the idea didn't apply.

electionlawblog.org?p=152656

Misleading Claims About Affected Districts #ELB Toward the end of his argument in Callais, Hashim Mooppan seemed to assert that neutering Section 2 would affect only about fifteen congressional districts. In his words, “there are only 15 majority-B...

The deputy SG drastically understated the number of districts that would be stripped of legal protection under the administration's proposal in Callais.

He said about 15 districts would be affected -- the actual number is close to 70.

electionlawblog.org?p=152614

YouTube video by Safeguarding Democracy Project UCLA Law Redistricting and Re-redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Elections

Watch Archived Video of @law.ucla.edu Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar: “Redistricting and Re-Redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Elections” www.youtube.com/watch?v=x063... @mcpli.bsky.social @profnickstephan.bsky.social Guy Charles and Moon Duchin

That's what the state often says, but the case law (most recently Milligan) is pretty clear that "race conscious" districts that comply with traditional criteria yet aim to increase minority representation don't trigger strict scrutiny.

I guess I see (1) whether compliance with a law is a compelling interest as distinct from (2) whether the law itself is constitutional. So, on this view, nothing about a law's constitutionality follows from compliance with the law being a compelling interest (or not).

It's not the death knell for Section 2 because virtually all remedial districts aren't deemed to be motivated primarily by race. They're almost always "race conscious" but not "racially predominant," which the Court says is the line between okay and presumptively not.

The State Interest Solution #ELB I want to return to one possible outcome in Callais—holding that compliance with Section 2 isn’t a compelling state interest—that I’ve previously flagged but hasn’t gotten much attention. Here are som...

electionlawblog.org?p=152588

I wrote this ELB post on a less radical resolution to Callais that may be appealing to some justices.

The idea is just to hold that compliance with Section 2 isn't a compelling interest that can justify what would otherwise be unlawful racial gerrymandering.

Would anyone still sue under Section 2 if the AG's proposal was adopted? You already need an alternative map (matching the challenged plan's partisanship) to win a racial gerrymandering claim. To win a Section 2 claim, you'd have to do that -- plus satisfy the rest of the Gingles prongs and the TOC.

Ironically, VRA plaintiffs would be better off if they had lost in Milligan. Alabama's "race-blind baseline" is legal nonsense. But it's much better for VRA plaintiffs than the SG's proposal -- under which southern states can just erase *all* minority representation.

Destroying Section 2 in Order to Save It #ELB At first glance, the SG’s brief in Callais seems less radical than those of the appellees and of Louisiana. The latter argue that Section 2 is flatly unconstitutional, while the SG’s brief merely reco...

As I recently wrote, the SG's "moderate" proposal to merely "modify" the Gingles framework would still end Section 2 as we know it.

By requiring plaintiffs to match the partisanship of challenged plans, it would block essentially all Section 2 claims in the South.

electionlawblog.org?p=152332

The stakes were lower than in today's Callais argument, but I had the opportunity to argue for the New York VRA's constitutionality yesterday before the NY Court of Appeals.

Case summary:
www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/summa...

Plaintiffs' brief:
static1.squarespace.com/static/60a55...

In this zone, disputes must be resolved on grounds other than the constitutional text's original meaning. Alignment could be a factor that courts consider in the construction zone, pushing them to further, not to frustrate, this value.

Likewise, American constitutional law could appreciate the full arrays of misaligning threats and potential judicial responses to them. Lastly, one of the key concepts of modern originalism is the construction zone.

So doctrines analogous to those that implement federalism could be crafted to operationalize alignment. Second, comparative constitutional law recognizes democratic malfunctions that involve misalignment as well as innovative judicial remedies for these problems.