Justin and Rick have already noted the California Supreme Court’s major decision yesterday about the CVRA. I wanted to flag a few reasons why the decision is commendable — a model for state voting rights acts (and courts construing state voting rights acts) in other states. First, the court properly held that liability can’t be established based on racially polarized voting alone. It would be quite troubling if this were the only element of a racial vote dilution claim. Racially polarized voting is very common in American elections, so if this were all that had to be shown, few electoral systems would be safe from plausible challenges. Additionally, the existence of racially polarized voting doesn’t necessarily mean that some other system would improve minority representation. If a minority group couldn’t secure more representation under any other system, it’s a stretch to say its vote is diluted under the status quo.

Second, the court held that a plaintiff must identify a lawful alternative system under which the plaintiff’s class would be better represented. This approach nicely solves the well-known problem of the benchmark for assessing vote dilution. Under this approach, the benchmark isn’t proportional representation or maximal representation or (as under the federal VRA) the representation that would follow from drawing reasonably-configured majority-minority districts. Instead, the benchmark is simply whatever lawful alternative system a plaintiff specifies. Dilution is present if the plaintiff’s class would, in fact, be better represented under that system than under the status quo.

Finally, the court made clear that a plaintiff can identify an alternative other than a single-member-district map. In particular, a plaintiff can put forward a system of proportional representation using cumulative, limited, or ranked-choice voting. A couple California cities have recently switched from at-large elections to systems of proportional representation after being threatened with CVRA lawsuits. These systems promise better minority representation than single-member districts along with fewer policymaking pathologies. It’s wonderful news that the court explicitly recognized these systems as viable alternatives to the status quo. Hopefully this will encourage more CVRA litigants to consider these systems as remedies when violations are found.

I should also note that the court’s holdings are perfectly consistent with the recommendations that Ruth Greenwood and I offered in our recent article on state voting rights acts. We advised that (1) liability should be based on both racially polarized voting and minority underrepresentation; (2) the plaintiff should be responsible for identifying the benchmark relative to which vote dilution is determined; and (3) systems of proportional representation should be favored as remedies for vote dilution. In all these ways, the CVRA now corresponds to our conception of best practices for state voting rights acts.