On July 18, 2022, a team of Faegre Drinker litigators filed an amicus brief on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of current and former U.S. senators and their chief counsel in an important appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Merrill v. Milligan case arises under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The plaintiffs in Milligan argued that the congressional map the Alabama legislature enacted following the 2020 census violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because its effect was to discriminate against minority voters on the basis of their race.
Without taking a position on the merits of the lawsuit, Faegre Drinker represented a bipartisan coalition of current and former U.S. Senators and their chief counsel who were involved in the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, and the re-authorization of those amendments in 2006. The amicus brief explained that a claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not require proof of intent, and that proportionality is a permissible factor to consider in the Section 2 analysis.
