On May 22, 2017,
the Supreme Court held that North Carolina legislators redrew two legislative
districts in ways that intentionally discriminated against African American
voters. Using the pretext of complying with the Voting Rights Act (VRA), North
Carolina’s General Assembly redrew the boundaries of two legislative districts
to dilute the voting strength of African Americans.
The events leading
to this case began when the 2010 census showed that North Carolina’s District 1
was significantly underpopulated. To comply with the one-person-one-vote
principle, the State needed to place almost 100,000 new people in the district.
The other District, (District 12), did not need any changes as it was only overpopulated
by 3,000 people out of over 730,000 residents. Despite the lack of any
significant population changes boundary lines were redrawn in ways that significantly
altered the district’s racial composition. It gained approximately 35,000
African-Americans of voting age and lost 50,000 whites. The black voting age
population increased from 43.8% to 50.7%.
To prevail on a
claim of racial gerrymandering the plaintiff must prove that race was the
motivating factor in the decision to place a significant number of voters in or
outside of a particular district. This requires a showing that the legislature
subordinated traditional districting considerations to racial considerations.
If racial considerations predominate, the burden shifts to the State to prove
that its race-based voter distributions serve a “compelling interest” and are
“narrowly tailored” to achieving that goal. The Supreme Court has held that
compliance with the VRA can be a compelling justification.
In this case legislators
decided African-Americans should constitute majority of the voting-age population
in District 1. They argued that the district needed a majority-minority voting
population to comply with the VRA. In Thornburg
v. Gingles the Supreme Court identified three conditions for proving vote
dilution under Section 2 of the VRA. First, a minority group must be sufficiently
large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a legislative
district. Second, the minority group must be politically cohesive. Finally, the
district’s white majority must vote sufficiently as a bloc to defeat the
minority’s preferred candidate.
In this case North
Carolina’s evidence did not satisfy the third Gingles prerequisite; white bloc-voting. The evidence showed that year
after year, District 1 was a “cross-over” district, in which white voters helped
African Americans to elect the candidates of their choice.
In the case of
District 12, North Carolina claimed that legislators redrew lines to “pack” the
district with Democrats, not African Americans. Rejecting this argument the
Supreme Court concluded that the evidence presented at trial adequately supported
the conclusion that race, not partisan considerations, was the predominate
factor in the district’s configuration.
The Court also
rejected the State’s claim that a plaintiff in a racial-gerrymandering case had to prove that an
alternative districting plan would have the same partisan impact without the
same racial demographics.
As one commentator explained, “the equal protection clause
does not have a partisanship exception.” Republican-dominated state legislatures have created brazen racial gerrymanders, pushing black voters out of GOP
districts and herding them into Democratic ones. States attempting to use
packing to dilute the voting strength of black or Latino voters cannot hide
behind the Voting Rights Act to justify doing so. Republican efforts to
manipulate and corrupt the electoral process undermine the foundations of our
democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment