Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSBlog maintains a Petitions to Watch page at SCOTUSwiki, corresponding to his Legal Times column listing cases he thinks “are leading candidates for Supreme Court review or that raise significant national issues.” Tom’s got a very good track record, but I think there are advantages to specialization. In that spirit, I intend to preview “Election Law Petitions to Watch” when a significant cert. petition or appeal comes before the Supreme Court. (A few weeks ago Tom declined to list Crawford, the Indiana voter id case, on his list. I suggested (see comments) that Tom should have included this case, which the Court has granted. )
Tom’s new Petitions to Watch list for Friday’s conference is now available. Tom has not included City of Modesto v. Sanchez, No. 07-88. I think this case has a reasonably good chance of being granted, though there are ripeness issues associated with the case.
In this case, a state trial court struck down the California Voting Rights Act as violating the Equal Protection Clause and under a state constitutional provision. The Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeal reversed. The California Supreme Court denied review.
At issue is a lawsuit over whether the City of Modesto must move from at large voting to districts for city council elections. Plaintiffs brought a facial challenge to the law, arguing that it made racial classifications and therefore is subject to strict scrutiny. The intermediate appellate court viewed the law as not imposing any racial classifications and therefore rejected the City’s argument that strict scrutiny should apply in considering whether the state may impose a districting solution for the problem of minority vote dilution.
Putting aside questions of standing and ripeness (which may be serious objections here), this strikes me as a strong case for Supreme Court review. I could see some of the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court very concerned about the lack of strict scrutiny in a racial vote dilution case. I also think that granting cert. is consistent with the Court’s recent pattern (as in cases like Lopez Torres and the Washington top two primary case) in reaching out to grant cert in cases presenting interesting, and relatively low stakes, election law cases—because they are both interesting and important.