It was 160 miles long and generally corresponded to the Interstate 85 corridor. In their complaint, appellants did not claim that the General Assembly's reapportionment plan unconstitutionally "diluted" white voting strength. Racial gerrymanders come in various shades: At-large voting schemes, see, e. g., White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973); the fragmentation of a minority group among various districts "so that it is a majority in none," Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 153 (1993), otherwise known as "cracking," cf. There is no independent constitutional requirement of compactness or contiguity, and the Court's opinion (despite its many references to the shape of District 12, see ante, at 635-636, 641, 642, 644-648) does not suggest otherwise. Grofman, Would Vince Lombardi Have Been Right If He Had Said: ''When It Comes to Redistricting, Race Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing"?, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. Robinson O. Everett argued the cause for appellants. Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 141 (1976). See, e. g., Wygant v. Jackson Ed. The Attorney General objected to the plan on the ground that a second district could have been created to give effect to minority voting strength in the State's south-central to southeastern region. Blumstein, Defining and Proving Race Discrimination: Perspectives on the Purpose V s. Results Approach from the Voting Rights Act, 69 Va. L. Rev. Our voting rights precedents support that conclusion. [W]e believe that reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter. The message that such districting sends to elected representatives is equally pernicious. Bolling, The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently from other districting claims.9 The only justification I. The General Assembly enacted a reapportionment plan that included one majority-black congressional district. Location North Carolina General Assembly. cases of electoral districting and one for most other types of state governmental decisions. "Dilution" thus refers to the effects of districting decisions not on an individual's political power viewed in isolation, but on the political power of a group. See Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448,524-525, n. 3 (1980) (Stewart, J., dissenting) ("No person in [UJOJ was deprived of his electoral franchise"); Regents of Univ. tion. Croson, 488 U. S., at 494 (plurality opinion); see also id., at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment). Where it exists, most often the result is that neither white nor black can be elected from a district in which his race is in the minority." APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA. Three Justices rejected the plaintiffs' claim on the grounds that the New York statute "represented no racial slur or stigma with respect to whites or any other race" and left white voters with better than proportional representation. Justice Stevens wrote a separate dissent. JUSTICE SOUTER apparently believes that racial gerrymandering is harmless unless it dilutes a racial group's voting strength. They did not even claim to be white. 42 U. S. C. 1973(b). v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 304-305 (1978) (Powell, J.) The Justices disagreed only as to whether the plaintiffs had carried their burden of proof at trial. US attorney general rejected a North Carolina congressional reappointment plan because the plan created only one black majority district, 1. Shaw v. Reno is an important decision because it represents a conservative shift on the Court. Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 144 (1976) (WHITE, J., dissenting). The group claimed that the districts were racial gerrymanders that violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Racial classifications of any sort pose the risk of lasting harm to our society. Limited by its own terms to cases involving unusually shaped districts, the Court's approach nonetheless will unnecessarily hinder to some extent a State's voluntary effort to ensure a modicum of minority representation. Hirabayas hi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943). The North Carolina Republican Party and individual voters brought suit in Federal District Court, alleging that the plan constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander under Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109 (1986). That claim was dismissed, see Pope v. Blue, 809 F. Supp. In the 17th, 19th, and 20th Districts, whites constituted respectively 94.9%, 71.5%, and 72.5% of the population. The Court held that members of a racial minority group claiming 2 vote dilution through the use of multimember districts must prove three threshold conditions: that the minority group "is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district," that the minority group is "politically cohesive," and that "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." The duty to govern impartially is abused when a group with power over the electoral process defines electoral boundaries solely to enhance its own political strength at the expense of any weaker group. Appellants sued the Governor of North Carolina, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, and members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (state appellees), together with two federal officials, the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division (federal appellees). 6 In this regard, I agree with JUSTICE WHITE'S assessment of the difficulty the white plaintiffs would have here in showing that their opportunity to participate equally in North Carolina's electoral process has been unconstitutionally diminished. Post, at 671 (WHITE, J., dissenting); see also post, at 684 (SOUTER, J., dissenting). in relevant part). If the company issues these new bonds at an annual coupon rate of 8%, they will sell at par. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. or What? There is thus no theoretical inconsistency in having two distinct approaches to equal protection analysis, one for. Voting Rights Act of 1965 encourages the creation of districts with majorities of minority voters. It is true, of course, that one's vote may be more or less effective depending on the interests of the other individuals who are in one's district, and our cases recognize the reality that members of the same race often have shared interests. Written and curated by real attorneys at Quimbee. Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 422 (1977); the "stacking" of "a large minority population concentration with a larger white population," Parker, Racial Gerrymandering and Legislative Reapportionment, in Minority Vote Dilution 85, 92 (C. Davidson ed. United States Supreme Court. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA, No. The Justice Department accepted this revision. The Court applied the same reasoning to the "uncouth twenty-eight-sided" municipal boundary line at issue in Gomillion. The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently from other districting claims. You can explore additional available newsletters here. See, e. g., Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347 (1915). Forty of North Carolina's one hundred counties are covered by 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U. S. C. 1973c, which prohibits a jurisdiction subject to its provisions from implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" without federal authorization, ibid. 2 Recognition of actual commonality of interest and racially polarized bloc voting cannot be equated with the "'invocation of race stereotypes'" described by the Court, ante, at 648 (quoting Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 630-631 (1991)), and forbidden by our case law. that the white voters who brought the suit could not prove they had been injured in any way by the redistricting plan, and second, that the redistricting plan was an attempt to equalize treatment by providing minority voters with an effective voice in the political process, not an attempt to strip voting power from a particular group. Its central purpose is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race. Under either formulation, it is irrefutable that appellants in this proceeding likewise have failed to state a claim. Reno. But the cases are critically different in another way. -the shape of the district was not compact or contiguous. (emphasis added). We said as much in Gaffney: "[C]ourts have [no] constitutional warrant to invalidate a state plan, otherwise within tolerable population limits, because it undertakes, not to minimize or eliminate the political strength of any group or party, but to recognize it and, through districting, provide a rough sort of proportional representation in the legislative halls of the State." to Juris. JOHN H. MERRILL, ALABAMA SECRETARY OF STATE, ET AL. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google. With respect to this incident, one writer has observed that "understanding why the configurations are shaped as they are requires us to know at least as much about the interests of incumbent Democratic politicians, as it does knowledge of the Voting Rights Act." no further than the Voting Rights Act to understand that this may be required, and we have held that race may constitutionally be taken into account in order to comply with that Act. The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, surely, does not stand in the way. and by him referred to the Court in No. To comply with 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - which prohibits a covered jurisdiction from implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" without federal authorization - North Carolina submitted to the Attorney General a congressional . To begin with, the complaint nowhere alleges any type of stigmatic harm. (emphasis added). The State's revised plan contained a second majority-black district in the north-central region. Pope v. Blue, 809 F. Supp. See n. 7, supra. I summed up my views on this matter in the plurality opinion in Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109 (1986).3 Because districting inevitably is the expression of interest group politics, and because "the power to influence the political process is not limited to winning elections," id., at 132. Following is the case brief for Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993) Case Summary of Shaw v. Reno: The State of North Carolina, in response to the U.S. Attorney General's objection that it had only one majority-black congressional district, created a second majority-black district. Carr (1962) was a landmark case concerning re-apportionment and redistricting. In that regard, it closely resembles the present case. Nevertheless, there was no fencing out of the white population from participation in the political processes of the county, and the. Majority district, 1, appellants did not claim that the General Assembly enacted a reapportionment plan that included majority-black. In this proceeding likewise have failed to state a claim revised plan contained a second majority-black in... Is protected by reCAPTCHA and the line at issue in Gomillion area in which appearances do matter ( white J.! Diluted '' white voting strength having two distinct approaches to equal protection clause of the district was not compact contiguous. 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