EFFORTS TO GUT VOTING RIGHTS ACT REJECTED
In Thronburg v. Gingles, decided June 30, 1986, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Congress clearly intended that local election laws may be discriminatory if their result, regardless of the intent, is to dilute minority voting strength. The ruling gave strong support to the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, which the Justice Department had sought to weaken. The Court further found that the occasional election of a minority candidate does not prove the absence of discrimination.
The case involved a North Carolina redistricting plan which Black voters alleged diluted their voting power. The multimember districts engulfed concentrations of black voters thus preventing them from electing their own candidates. In another area, the plan fractured into separate voting minorities a concentration of black voters.
The Administration, which opposed Congressional efforts in 1982 to strengthen the Voting Rights Act ?? acquiescing only when it became apparent that a Presidential veto would be overridden -- had attempted in this case to do what it couldn't do in Congress, weaken the Voting Rights Act. The Department of Justice had filed a friend of the court brief in the case asserting that "minority voters have no right to the creation of safe electoral districts merely because they could feasibly be drawn." Further, the brief contended that since some blacks had won under the multimember district system, "the district court erred by concluding that use of that system "results" in a denial of "equal access" to the electoral process for minorities."
Julius Chambers, who argued the case for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the "opinion gives us a powerful new tool for ensuring the equal rights of minorities to register, to vote and to have their votes counted with equal weight" (Wash Post, July 1, 1986).
For a thorough description of the case, see the CIVIL RIGHTS MONITOR, October 1985.
NOTE: Bill Taylor, Vice President of the LC Education Fund, will be leaving his post as Director of the Center for National Policy Review at the end of August. He will have offices at the Advocacy Institute, 1730 M Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 659?5565. He will specialize in litigation and other forms of advocacy on behalf of children and in civil rights, and will continue to serve as Vice President of the FUND and as Senior Editor of the MONITOR.
