Larios v. Cox’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2022 · most notably League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006), Cox, Georgia Secretary of State v. Larios (2004)
7 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2284 · 2 U.S.C. § 2 · 2 U.S.C. § 2A · 2 U.S.C. § 2C · 42 U.S.C. § 1973C (§ 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965)
Relies on Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment · Baker v. Carr · Reynolds v. Sims · Gomillion v. Lightfoot · Wesberry v. Sanders
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The resulting 2002 Senate Plan has a total population deviation of 9.98% and an average deviation of 3.78%. The Senate districts deviate from ideal equal population by a range of + 4.99% to - 4.99%, with the largest district having 153,489 persons and the smallest district having 138,894 persons. Thirty-seven of the fifty-six districts (66.07%) have population deviations greater than ± 4%. Thirty-one districts (55.36%) have deviations greater than ± 4.5%, and sixteen districts (28.57%) have deviations greater than ± 4.9%. Not surprisingly, the most underpopulated districts are primarily Democratic-leaning, and the most overpopulated districts are primarily Republican-leaning. Moreover, all of the districts with negative deviations of more than 4% are situated either in south Georgia or within inner-city Atlanta. As in the House, redistricting plans with smaller population deviations were offered for consideration, but were summarily rejected. “The 2002 Senate Plan splits eighty-one counties into 219 parts. The plan also paired twelve incumbents, including ten of the twenty-four incumbent Republicans (42% of the caucus) but only two of the thirty-two incumbent Democrats (6% of the caucus).””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]hile Democratic incumbents who supported the plans were generally protected, Republican incumbents were regularly pitted against one another in an obviously purposeful attempt to unseat as many of them as possible. In the House Plan, forty-seven incumbents were paired, including thirty-seven Republicans, which was 50% of the Republican caucus, but only nine Democrats, comprising less than 9% of that caucus (as well as one Independent). Because six of the twenty-one districts involved were multi-member districts, the end result was that a maximum of twenty-eight of the paired incumbents could be re-elected, and the remaining nineteen would be unseated. Similarly, the 2002 Senate Plan included six incumbent pairings: four Republican-Republican pairings and two Republican-Democrat pairings. In the 2002 general election, eighteen Republican incumbents in the House and four Republican incumbents in the Senate lost their seats due to the pairings, while only three Democratic incumbents in the House and no Democratic incumbents in the Senate lost seats this way.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““took into account the political desires of various Democratic incumbents in order to achieve the ninety-one votes required to pass a plan. This was particularly difficult in south Georgia and urban Atlanta, as the districts in those areas were vastly underpopulated at the beginning of the redistricting process and the incumbents in those districts struggled to maintain as many seats as possible. Additionally, incumbents in all areas of the state sought to limit the expansion of their districts to what was considered legally necessary, i.e., a population deviation of ± 5%.... At no time did the drafters of the plans nurture the ambition of drawing maps as close to equal in population as was reasonably practicable. In the end, many south Georgia incumbents who had seniority over other House members used their political influence to preserve the representation of rural interests as much as possible, resulting in greater negative population deviations in these areas and, consequently, greater positive population deviations in other areas.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.