Abha Khanna

At the Supreme Court on October 4, 2022, Abha Khanna explained why preserving Alabama's old congressional districts could not be the decisive test for a proposed replacement. Justice Sonia Sotomayor had asked about boundaries carrying forward earlier racial inequality. Khanna answered that a plaintiff required to demonstrate a new district would necessarily produce a different map. Treating the old boundaries as controlling, she argued, would allow a state to perpetuate the very arrangement challenged under the Voting Rights Act.

Khanna was arguing for the Caster plaintiffs, whom she had represented as lead trial counsel. Black Alabamians comprised more than a quarter of the state's population but had an opportunity to elect their preferred candidate in only one of seven congressional districts, a pattern largely unchanged since 1992. Caster proceeded alongside Milligan, where a three-judge panel, including two judges appointed by President Trump, had found likely vote dilution under Section 2.

Her clients' evidence included maps prepared by Bill Cooper. He had considered race alongside compactness, connected territory, equal population and other districting criteria, testifying that he gave the factors equal weight. The courts credited that explanation. At argument, Khanna drew on the alternative maps and expert testimony to oppose Alabama's proposed race-neutral benchmark and its attempt to make discriminatory intent necessary to the statutory claim. Her clients' record showed how an additional opportunity district could be drawn while respecting other districting requirements.

The Ruling and the Replacement Map

On June 8, 2023, the Court affirmed the preliminary ruling in Allen v. Milligan by five votes to four, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing. It retained the results-based test and the totality-of-circumstances framework, rejecting Alabama's proposed race-neutrality requirement. The alternative-map evidence that Khanna and her colleagues had developed remained central to the decision.

As lead counsel through the Caster remedial proceedings, she returned to court with her team after Alabama enacted another map with only one majority-Black district. The 2024 election instead used a court-drawn map providing a second district of opportunity. That November, Alabama elected two Black members of Congress simultaneously for the first time in its history. Obtaining the remedy required testing proposed districts against community boundaries, demographic patterns and voting behavior, sometimes within days of a court's deadline.

In 2025, the lower courts permanently barred the state's map, with findings addressing its resistance to a second opportunity district. On May 11, 2026, after Louisiana v. Callais changed the Section 2 framework, the Supreme Court vacated the Caster judgment and directed further consideration in the lower courts. The three-judge court then reconsidered the claims on an emergency schedule and on May 26 again preliminarily enjoined Alabama's 2023 plan. Khanna filed a declaration supporting the Caster voters' renewed motion and signed their June 1 opposition to Alabama's stay application. On June 2, the Supreme Court stayed the May 26 order, leaving the state's 2023 map in effect for the 2026 election while the renewed appeals proceed.

Teaching and Legal Practice

Before law school, Khanna taught high school English and planned to pursue a doctorate in literature. She later explained that the teaching and its effect on students mattered to her more than the academic subject alone. She changed course toward law, where she could use her writing and analytical skills in work affecting other people's lives.

She graduated from Yale Law School in 2007, joined Perkins Coie's Seattle office in 2010 and became a partner in its political-law practice in 2017. When Marc Elias established Elias Law Group in 2021 to represent voters, Democratic clients and organizations working to protect democracy, she joined as a founding partner and led the redistricting practice. The post-2020 census cycle brought nearly twenty redistricting matters under her supervision, in state and federal courts from trial through appeal.

In Ohio, Khanna was part of the team that obtained the state supreme court's July 2022 decision striking down the congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordering a replacement. Her work has also extended through Georgia, Texas and Washington, each with distinct demographics, election histories and legal procedures. Preparing those cases involves examining experts, developing demographic evidence and tracing legislative choices, with the eventual appeal in view.

Yakima's New Council

Khanna mentors lawyers, guest-lectures in election law at the University of Washington School of Law and speaks at law schools and civil-rights symposiums. Her early work in Yakima gave her experience with the different stages she now supervises. In 2014, she and colleagues at Perkins Coie worked with the ACLU of Washington to challenge the city's council election system for Latino voters. She handled discovery, took depositions and argued for judgment on the record without a trial.

The court ruled for the voters, and the first election under the new districting plan brought three Latinas onto a council that had never elected a Latino member. Recalling that election in a 2022 interview, Khanna described watching the community's response and recognizing what the changed system made possible: "We are actually making room for others to have a seat at the table."