Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Court rebukes GOP for racial gerrymandering
N.C. Republicans packed blacks into 2 House districts
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rebuked North Carolina’s Republican leaders Monday for shifting tens of thousands of black voters into two congressional districts that had steadily elected black Democrats, striking down the move as racial gerrymandering.
The Constitution forbids a state from “separating its citizens into voting districts on the basis of race” without a compelling reason, the high court said in an opinion joined by its four liberals and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.
The ruling is the third in recent years to fault Southern Republicans for packing more black voters into districts where AfricanAmericans were already the dominant voting bloc. By concentrating black voters into a few districts, the revised maps strengthened the GOP’s hold in the surrounding areas.
It was also second time in two weeks the court dealt a setback to North Carolina Republicans. Last week, the justices let stand a ruling that struck down a 2013 law that added new restrictions on voting on the grounds the state had deliberately discriminated against its black voters.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder hailed Monday’s ruling as a “watershed moment in the fight to end racial gerrymandering. North Carolina’s maps were among the worst racial gerrymanders in the nation. Today’s ruling sends a stark message to legislatures and governors around the country.”
The main impact of Monday’s ruling will be in the South. Under the Voting Rights Act, Southern states were pressed in the 1990s to create voting districts that would elect African-American candidates to Congress or the state legislature.
Back then, civil rights advocates and liberal Democrats supported drawing these districts along racial lines as a way to reverse decades of discrimination, while the high court’s conservatives, including Thomas, were opposed.
After the 2010 census, liberals and conservatives began to flip sides on the issue. Republican lawmakers cited the Voting Rights Act as a justification for moving even more blacks into black-majority districts on the grounds they were protecting black incumbents.
Democrats and civil rights lawyers objected, arguing the Republicans were diluting the electoral clout of black voters.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the court had rightly recognized that disputed North Carolina districts “were clearly drawn with an intent to illegally pack as many black and Latino voters into as small an area as possible.” The decision “should send a strong signal to other states that ... racial gerrymandering will be struck down as illegal and unconstitutional.”
Monday’s decision won’t settle the broader national debate over gerrymandering.
Many Democrats and political scientists say Republicans have used partisan line-drawing — which is currently allowed under the law — to maintain a grip on the House of Representatives. They point to states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, where Republicans have used party affiliation to give themselves control of most of the congressional seats.
In Maryland, Democrats have drawn lines based on party membership to give them a clear advantage in all but one district.
The Supreme Court has not taken a stand against partisan gerrymandering. And Monday’s decision includes a dissent by Justice Samuel Alito that defends partisan gerrymandering.
“Politics and political considerations are inseparable from districting and apportionment, and it is well known that state legislative majorities very often attempt to gain an electoral advantage through that process,” Alito wrote.
Liberal reformers had hoped the court in the year ahead would rein in partisan gerrymandering.