Trevino v. Palmer

Issues: (1) Whether a single-judge district court’s ruling on a claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, challenging a legislative district, may divest a three-judge panel of jurisdiction to decide a 14th Amendment challenge to that same district; (2) whether the lower court erred by deciding the Section 2 claim before the three-judge panel issued its opinion on the 14th Amendment claim regarding the same legislative district; (3) whether the lower court erred by finding that plaintiffs satisfied the first precondition in Thornburg v. Gingles even though none of plaintiff’s experts analyzed whether the minority community was geographically compact enough to constitute a majority in a single-member district; (4) whether the lower court erred when it found that the Hispanic population of Washington State House Legislative District 15 was politically cohesive and preferred Democratic candidates, even though the district is a majority-Hispanic district where a Latina Republican won by a 35-point margin in the only election held in the district; (5) whether the lower court erred in finding that white voters—who comprise a minority portion of the citizen voting-age population in Legislative District 15—voted as a bloc against the Hispanic-majority’s preferred candidates, despite the lack of legally significant racially polarized voting; (6) whether the lower court erred in its totality of the circumstances analysis in light of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Allen v. Milligan; and (7) whether the single-judge court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2284?