Emmet Bondurant Returns to SCOTUS in Gerrymandering Case
Emmet Bondurant's soft tone only enhances his enduring outrage over voting rights violations. Bondurant, 82, partner at Atlanta's
Bondurant Mixson & Elmore, is returning to the Supreme Court this morning to argue against partisan gerrymandering. He last argued in the high court more than 30 years ago.
"The case presents the most extreme, overt and brutal partisan gerrymander than any court has ever seen," he said. "The North Carolina General Assembly adopted written criteria and expressly stated the objective of the plan was to entrench their current (Republican) control on the congressional delegation and preserve their 10-3 partisan advantage. And they said how they were going to do it."
In Rucho v. Common Cause, Bondurant has 20 minutes not only to persuade the justices that North Carolina's congressional redistricting plan
violates four provisions of the Constitution, but that the high court can do what it has failed to do in past challenges—announce a standard for judging when partisanship in redistricting runs afoul of the Constitution.
Representing Common Cause, Bondurant shares argument time with
Allison Riggs of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, who is counsel to the League of Women Voters of North Carolina.
Kirkland & Ellis partner
Paul Clementrepresents Republican leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly. The justices extended argument time from 60 minutes to a total of 70 minutes.
The justices will hear a second partisan gerrymandering challenge on the heels of the Rucho case. In Lamone v. Benisek—a return of the same challenge heard last term—Republican voters
challenged the Democratic-controlled Maryland General Assembly's redistricting of the 6th congressional district as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
Mayer Brown partner Michael Kimberly represents challenger John Benisek; Maryland solicitor general
Steven Sullivanwill
defend the redistricting plan.
The North Carolina case is in a sense a bookend to Bondurant's career, which spans more than five decades.
A 1960 graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, Bondurant argued his first Supreme Court case—and won—in 1964: Wesberry v. Sanders. A 6-3 majority held population differences in Georgia congressional districts violated the one man, one vote requirement.
Two years later, he was back in Fortis v. Morris but this time he lost a challenge, 5-4, to an 1824 provision in the Georgia constitution on the election of the governor after the candidates failed to receive a majority of the vote.
Nearly 20 years later, he was back at the podium in Hishon v. King & Spalding in which the justices in 1984
unanimously held the law firm illegally discriminated against his client, attorney
Elizabeth Hishon, on the basis of her sex by denying her a partnership in the firm.
Besides his long commitment to civil rights, Bondurant has pursued indigent defense—death penalty, habeas and other issues—with equal passion. But the North Carolina gerrymander case may be his biggest challenge. The case has drawn numerous amicus briefs from across the political spectrum. And the next round of redistricting looms large.
"There is no question that this is really a pivot point in this kind of litigation," Bondurant said. "All of the theories are before the court on the most favorable factual record."
An affirmance, he said, will constrain and guide legislators and tell them they can't deliberately disadvantage voters to entrench themselves in power. But a loss, he added, will tell legislators after 2020 that there are no constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering. "You will be endorsing the legality of the practice and giving state legislatures an unlimited hunting license."
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