Race-Blind Redistricting Algorithms

Abstract

Litigants increasingly use algorithmic evidence in redistricting cases, employing a collection of algorithmically generated plans to point out the outlier status of the state’s current plan. But with the Supreme Court’s declaration of a race-blind Equal Protection Clause in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the constitutionality of these methods as used in racial gerrymandering cases remains uncertain. Other scholars have examined the potential impacts of race blindness as an algorithmic constraint. This Note instead interrogates the practical possibility of race-blind redistricting algorithms and finds the promise of blindness illusory. Rather, requirements to limit racial inputs in redistricting algorithms fail to create race-neutral outcomes under any of the exclusionary methods examined within