Supreme Court rejects lastest N.C. voting map

Justices cite racial bias in two gerrymandered congressional 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, in a decision that could affect many voting maps, generally in the South.

The decision was handed down by an unusual coalition of justices, and was the latest in a series of setbacks for Republican-led legislatures. In recent cases concerning legislative maps in Alabama and Virginia, as well, the Supreme Court has insisted that packing black voters into a few districts violates the Constitution.

Republicans in the North Carolina Legislature denied that race was the predominant factor in redrawing the boundaries of the two districts under review. In one of them, though, they said, they had made some use of race.

The lawmakers said they had tried to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which in some settings requires that black voters be concentrated in numbers sufficient to provide them an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. But critics of the voting map said the Legislature was actually trying to diminish the number of districts in the state that could be won by Democrats.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said states do not have unlimited leeway in drawing districts in a claimed attempt to comply with the voting law. With the decision, the court also was attempting 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 suspect.

Some election law experts said the ruling, which upheld a lower court decision, 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 L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Others said the decision merely applied settled legal principles. “This is part of a court project over 30 years now of trying to see that race is not used in the design of election districts any more than is necessary,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University.

Whether the decision announced new legal principles or applied old ones, Democrats welcomed it.

“This is a watershed moment in the fight to end racial gerrymandering,” Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general and the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. “North Carolina’s maps were among the worst racial gerrymanders in the nation.”

The ruling Monday was the second Supreme Court victory for North Carolina Democrats this month.

On May 15, the justices declined to hear an appeal of a decision that had struck down parts of a restrictive North Carolina voting law that, among other things, tightened voter identification requirements and cut back on early voting.

In Monday’s decision on North Carolina’s congressional map, the justices were unanimous in rejecting District 1, in the northeastern part of the state.

The court divided, 5-3, in rejecting District 12, in the south-central part of the state. The five-justice majority for the part of the decision concerning District 12 was an unusual coalition. Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Kagan’s majority opinion.