Dechert Team Files Amicus Curiae Brief in US Supreme Court Redistricting Case

On August 18, 2023, a cross-office team at Dechert, along with Harvard Law School Professor Guy-Uriel Charles and T. Alora Thomas-Lundborg of Harvard Law School, filed an amicus brief in Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP on behalf of political science professors who study, publish on, and testify regarding voting rights and redistricting.

The case concerns South Carolina’s redrawn congressional districts, one of which Appellees argue—and the court below held—was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that was designed with a racially discriminatory purpose. This amicus brief, in support of Appellees, explained the expert methodologies used below, which the political science professor amici developed more than 20 years ago and have used in multiple other voting cases, to show that Appellees’ expert methodologies have been accepted by the Supreme Court repeatedly, are reliable, and provide sound circumstantial evidence that race—not politics—predominated the South Carolina redistricting process. Click here to read the amicus brief.

Oral argument in Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP is scheduled for October 11, 2023.

The Dechert team comprises Neil Steiner (S&CL – New York), Angela Liu (S&CL – Chicago), Stefanie Tubbs (PLMT - Philadelphia), Christopher Merken (S&CL – Philadelphia), Nina Riegelsberger (S&CL – New York) and Sarah Taylor (PLMT – Philadelphia).

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