Supreme Court Rules For Third Time in North Carolina Voting Case
From: Civil Rights Monitor Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1999)
On May 17, 1999, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that judges must strictly examine the evidence before ruling that race has been the predominant factor in the drawing of congressional district lines. The case, Hunt v. Cromartie, concerned North Carolina's 12th Congressional District, which was declared an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in 1996 and was redrawn in 1997.
In Hunt, the state was again accused of using race to draw the district lines in order to benefit African-American candidates. The Supreme Court overturned a federal court's judgment that awarded the plaintiffs summary judgment. The district court had heard argument on the pending motions, but granted the plaintiffs motion before either party had conducted discovery and without an evidentiary hearing. The Court found that the district court had not examined the state's motives carefully enough before assuming they were based mainly on race. The decision stressed that neither a correlation between race and political party nor knowledge of that correlation by those who draw the district lines automatically makes a district unconstitutional. The decision will have important implications for the redrawing of districts after the 2000 census, as it gives states more latitude in drawing district lines.
Background
Redistricting refers to the redrawing of congressional lines after each state has been allocated its number of districts following each decennial census. Passage of the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 led the Justice Department to support state legislatures in creating voting districts that maximize the influence of African Americans and Hispanics in electing representatives to Congress, in order to counteract past discrimination. This practice has had its share of problems in the courts. During the last decade, the Court has clearly stated that any law that classifies citizens according to race is immediately constitutionally suspect. Opponents of majority-minority districts have asserted that racial gerrymanders tend to rely on racial stereotypes, may polarize voters, and are a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In response to numerous challenges to such districts, the Supreme Court has ruled that any gerrymander "predominantly" based on race is unconstitutional.
The drawing of North Carolina's Twelfth Congressional District was first debated before the Supreme Court in 1993 in Shaw v. Reno. The plaintiffs claimed that the drawing of the district lines was unconstitutional because it separated voters into districts according to race without a compelling reason. The Supreme Court established that if this were true, the racial gerrymander would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court determined that in general, districts drawn with "bizarre" shapes simply to concentrate certain races together are unconstitutional. The Court then sent the case back to the District Court to determine whether North Carolina's 12th District actually was drawn for racial objectives.
After trial, the District Court found that North Carolina's District 12 did form an unconstitutional racial gerrymander by using race to draw the district lines. The district was oddly shaped, meandering in a snakelike fashion for 160 miles through some areas that were only as wide as Interstate-85. Five counties and even some towns were divided into separate districts. North Carolina's 12th district did, however, have a majority of black voters, and in 1992 it sent a black representative to Congress from North Carolina for the first time since 1901. When the case came before the Supreme Court in 1996 in Shaw v. Hunt, the Court affirmed the decision, concluding that the State had no compelling interest to justify the shaping of the district lines.
In 1997, North Carolina once again redrew the district lines, changing District 12 in a few key ways. Most important perhaps, blacks are now a minority of the district's total population, comprising only 47% of the general population and 43% of the voting age population. The district contains less than half of its former area and is now only 95 miles long. However, although the district is less wide and considerably shorter, it still follows Interstate-85, preserving its long and twisting path.
