Republican Party of New Mexico v. Oliver

The United States Constitution requires each state to redraw their congressional district maps every decade after each census to adjust to population changes. After the 2020 Census, the New Mexico legislature, controlled by Democrats, approved new congressional districts. The map caused the Second Congressional District to change from a near even split between Democratic and Republican party registrations to a 12% advantage for Democrats. To do this, the legislature lowered the number of Democrats in Congressional Districts One and Three and reallocated them to the Second Congressional District, while moving more conservative areas to the First and Third Congressional Districts. 

On January 21, 2022, the Republican Party of New Mexico challenged the new congressional map in the Fifth Judicial District Court of New Mexico, claiming it was a partisan gerrymander in violation of the New Mexico state constitution. In support of their claims, the plaintiff introduced evidence of legislators discussing their intention to redraw the Second Congressional District to help Democrats by cracking the district and placing registered Republicans in other districts.  

On February 2, 2022, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to strike down the map and impose a more balanced one. On July 11, 2022, the court ultimately denied the preliminary injunction and plaintiffs appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. The defendants claimed that New Mexico had no clear manageable standard for adjudicating partisan gerrymandering claims, that such claims were political questions, and that the case was non-justiciable. 

On November 8, 2022, in the first election following the map’s adoption, the Democratic candidate won the Second Congressional District by a 0.7% margin. 

On July 5, 2023, the New Mexico Supreme Court issued an order remanding the case to the trial court and directed them to review the partisan gerrymandering claim under the test U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan detailed in her dissent in Rucho v. Common Cause. Following this order, on August 22, 2023, the New Mexico Supreme Court issued its full opinion explaining why partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable. The court recognized that the right to vote is of “paramount importance,” and that it was the court’s duty to evaluate claims in which constitutionally protected rights were harmed. Further, the court held that the political question doctrine holding in the Rucho majority was not binding on the New Mexico Supreme Court.  

Justice Kagan’s three-part test asks whether: (1) the predominant purpose of the mapmaker was to entrench their party by drawing the district lines to dilute the votes of citizens favoring their opposition; (2) the map had the intended effect of substantially diluting their votes; and (3), if such a showing was made, could the state show a legitimate, non-partisan justification for the map. The New Mexico Supreme Court decided that the touchstone of an impermissible “egregious” gerrymander is political entrenchment through vote dilution, and that some amount of political gerrymandering is permissible.   

On August 14, 2023, the League of Women Voters of New Mexico filed an amicus brief in the trial court supporting no party, alongside Common Cause New Mexico and Election Reformers Network. The brief supplied the trial court with information on how to evaluate a map under Justice Kagan’s proposed test from Rucho v. Common Cause. 

On October 6, 2023, on remand, the trial court upheld the map. The court decided that the first and second prongs of the Kagan test were satisfied. The court ruled the mapmakers intended to entrench the Democratic Party by diluting the votes of Republican voters, as evidenced by legislators’ statements made when considering the map and by the map’s actual effect. Further, the court found the map had the effect of diluting the votes of Republican voters by increasing the Democratic advantage in the Second Congressional District and the partisan makeup of which voters were moved between districts. Finally, the court ruled the state did not show a legitimate non-partisan justification for the map.  

However, the court held that entrenchment of the Democratic Party had not been shown, so the map was not an impermissible egregious partisan gerrymander. Expert testimony was conflicted on whether the Second Congressional District’s election outcomes would be predetermined by the gerrymander or if it was competitive, and in the one race since the map was adopted, the Democratic candidate won by a 0.7% margin. Therefore, there was insufficient evidence to show that the Democratic Party had been successfully entrenched. 

On November 27, 2023, the New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision.  

The League was represented in this matter by Campaign Legal Center and Parsons Law LLC.