Mid-Decade Redistricting and the Purcell Principle

Yesterday, a three-judge district court preliminarily enjoined Texas’s mid-decade congressional redistricting map. This case will be promptly appealed to the Supreme Court, and it will be the first of many mid-decade redistricting cases on the shadow docket.

The district court’s opinion has a lengthy discussion of the Purcell principle—the notion that courts should not enjoin election laws close to an election. As Rick Hasen and Wilfred Codrington have shown, the Purcell principle is problematic. This post, however, takes Purcell on its own terms and argues that it should not apply to mid-decade redistricting plans.

As an initial matter, Purcell has more bite at the start of the decade. That is because States cannot use their previous maps under one-person, one-vote princ