League of United Latin America v. Gregory A, 951 F.3d 311

Plaintiffs (organizations and eligible Texas voters) challenged Texas’s winner-take-all (WTA) method for appointing presidential electors as violating one-person, one-vote, First and Fourteenth Amendment associational rights, and Section 2 VRA (VRA claim later waived).
Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief to replace WTA with a proportional apportionment of electors based on statewide vote percentages.
The district court granted the State defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) motion and dismissed all claims with prejudice; plaintiffs appealed.
Texas has used statewide WTA to allocate electors since statehood; the vast majority of states use WTA; two states use district-based variants.
Controlling precedent includes a summary affirmance of a lower-court decision upholding Virginia’s WTA scheme (Williams) and the long-recognized plenary power of state legislatures to appoint electors (McPherson).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Texas’s WTA violates one-person, one-vote	WTA dilutes and discards votes at the state and elector stages, like unlawful at-large, multi-member dilution	Williams/McPherson control; WTA does not deny equal suffrage absent invidious discrimination or arbitrary treatment	Dismissed — Williams governs; WTA not a one-person, one-vote violation here
Whether subsequent decisions overruled or abrogated Williams	Post-Williams cases (e.g., White, Bush v. Gore) changed doctrine so Williams no longer controls	Williams remains binding; later cases do not implicitly overrule it; lower courts must follow Supreme Court precedent	Dismissed — no doctrinal shift undone Williams; plaintiffs’ argument rejected
Whether WTA burdens First/14th Amendment associational rights	WTA prevents meaningful association and effective voting (votes yield zero electors) and shifts attention to swing states	No ballot-access or membership/association barriers; voters can vote and associate; losing outcome isn’t a constitutional burden	Dismissed — plaintiffs failed to allege a cognizable associational burden
Requested relief to impose proportional apportionment	Plaintiffs ask court to enjoin WTA and require proportional allocation of electors	State has plenary power to choose method; plaintiffs lack a valid constitutional claim supporting such relief	Denied via dismissal; injunctive relief not warranted

McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892) (state legislatures have plenary power to appoint electors)
Williams v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 393 U.S. 320 (1969) (per curiam) (summary affirmance upholding WTA scheme)
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) (equal treatment requirement where recount procedures produced arbitrary, disparate standards)
Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963) (one-person, one-vote principle articulated)
White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973) (multimember districts used to dilute minority votes can violate Equal Protection)
Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351 (1997) (First Amendment association limits do not guarantee advocacy will be effective)
Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51 (1973) (ballot access and the prime objective of voters in associating with parties)
Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992) (electoral process can reject losing candidates; frustration of loss is not a constitutional violation)
Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173 (1977) (summary dispositions prevent lower courts from reaching opposite conclusions on the issues decided)
Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997) (lower courts should follow directly applicable Supreme Court precedent)