Racial bias cited in tossing state’s voting districts
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down two North Carolina congressional districts, ruling that lawmakers had violated the Constitution by relying too heavily on race in drawing them.
The court rejected arguments from state lawmakers that their purpose in drawing the maps was not racial discrimination but partisan advantage.
The decision was the court’s latest attempt to solve a constitutional puzzle: how to disentangle the roles of race and partisanship when black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats. The difference matters because the Supreme Court has said that only racial gerrymandering is constitutionally suspect.
Election law experts said the ruling would make it easier to challenge voting districts based partly on partisan affiliations and partly on race.
“This will lead to many more successful racial gerrymandering cases in the American South and elsewhere,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the UC Irvine.
Conservatives complained that the Supreme Court had succeeded only in making the law murkier.
“The Supreme Court says race can be a factor in redistricting, but not the predominant factor, a rule that is so vague, so broad and so lacking in a definable legal standard that it is not really a rule at all,” Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer with the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement.
The justices were unanimous in rejecting District One, in the northeastern part of the state. After the 2010 census, lawmakers increased the district’s black voting-age population to 52.7 percent from 48.6 percent.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said black voters, in coalitions with others, had been able to elect their preferred candidates even before the redistricting. Adding more black voters to the district, she wrote, amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The court divided, 5-3, in rejecting District 12, in the south-central part of the state. Lawmakers increased the number of black voters to 50.7 percent from 43.8 percent.
In defending the new district lines for District 12, state lawmakers said they had meant to secure a partisan advantage for Republicans, a lawful goal. But Kagan said race could predominate even if legislators had mixed motives.
In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, wrote that the challengers had not shown that race rather than partisanship motivated the drawing of the district.