Jacob Hooper has written this student note for the George Mason Law Review. Here is the abstract:

The Supreme Court’s 2023 Allen v. Milligan decision upheld Thornburg v. Gingles from 1986. Gingles established preconditions creating majority-minority districts to protect a minority population’s voting rights. This Comment will argue that the Gingles preconditions fail to produce fair and representative districts that protect a minority population’s voting rights. In its place, this Comment will argue that courts should look to taxation when faced with a racial gerrymandering claim under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act or the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, this Comment will propose a tax approach for evaluating racially gerrymandered districts by analyzing the degree to which (1) the constituents of a district benefit from the same or similar tax-funded institutions and (2) the district contains similar tax revenue sources. This Comment will then apply the tax approach to the heart of Allen: Alabama’s post-2020 Census congressional districts.