A three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled today that the Commonwealth’s current congressional reapportionment plan violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and ordered the Virginia legislature to enact a remedial plan by no later than April 1, 2015. Perkins Coie brought this challenge on behalf of several Virginia voters, whose voting rights were diluted under the plan, in which the Virginia legislature used the preclearance requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as a pretext to pack African-American voters into Virginia’s gerrymandered Third Congressional District. The Court agreed that the Third Congressional District was a racial gerrymander, purportedly justified by the legislature’s attempts to comply with Section 5, but found that, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, Section 5 can no longer justify race-based reapportionment. 

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