indicator that some form of gerrymandering (racial or other) might have taken place and that "something may be amiss." Why did four justices in this case dissent from majority opinion? They found that race-based districting is not prohibited by the Constitution. The first of the two majority-black districts contained in the revised plan, District 1, is somewhat hook shaped. UJO, 430 U. S., at 162165 (opinion of WHITE, J. Race in redistricting is permissible as long as configurations are not too extreme, ch 7 part 2 prep pronouns and demonstratives, Christina Dejong, Christopher E. Smith, George F Cole, Government in America: Elections and Updates Edition, George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, Robert L. Lineberry. Redistricters have to justify themselves. 412 U. S., at 754. The Democratic National Committee maintained that the minority districts were constitutional, while the Republican National Committee argued that they were not. See ante, at 652 (acknowledging that "UJO set forth a standard under which white voters can establish unconstitutional vote dilution"). William H. Rehnquist Rehnquist. The majority attempts to distinguish UJO by imagining a heretofore unknown type of constitutional claim. The first question is easy. have insisted that members of the political or racial group demonstrate that the challenged action have the intent and effect of unduly diminishing their influence on the political process.1 Although this severe burden has limited the number of successful suits, it was adopted for sound reasons. Wygant, supra, at 295 (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment). Appellants contend that redistricting legislation that is so bizarre on its face that it is "unexplainable on grounds other than race," Arlington Heights, supra, at 266, demands the same close scrutiny that we give other state laws that classify citizens by race. Post, at 668 (WHITE, J., dissenting). Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 141 (1976). Although I disagree with the holding that appellants' claim is cognizable, the Court's discussion of the level of scrutiny it requires warrants a few comments. 75-104, p. 6, n. 6) (emphasis in original). As stated above, five Justices were of the view that, absent any contention that the proposed plan was adopted with the intent, or had the effect, of unduly minimizing the white majority's voting strength, the Fourteenth Amendment was not implicated. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309-313 (1966). Gomillion thus supports appellants' contention that district lines obviously drawn for the purpose of separating voters by race require careful scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause regardless of the motivations underlying their adoption. the group claimed that the districts were racial gerrymanders that violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, they have no bearing on whether the plan ultimately is found to violate the Constitution. It is shortsighted as well, for a regularly shaped district can just as effectively effectuate racially discriminatory gerrymandering as an odd-shaped one.9 By focusing on looks rather than impact, the majority "immediately casts attention in the wrong direction-toward superficialities of shape and size, rather than toward the political realities of district composition." Id., at 53-54. United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 U. S. 144, 161-162 (1977) (UJO) (pluralityopinion of WHITE, J., joined by Brennan, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ. See n. 7, supra. But even assuming that it does, there is no question that appellants have not alleged the requisite discriminatory effects. and by him referred to the Court in No. Today, the Court recognizes a new cause of action under which a State's electoral redistricting plan that includes a configuration "so bizarre," ante, at 644, that it "rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race [without] sufficient justification," ante, at 649, will be subjected to strict scrutiny. I believe that the Equal Protection Clause is violated when the State creates the kind of uncouth district boundaries seen inKarcher v. Daggett(1983),Gomillion v. Lightfoot)(1960), and this case, for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for members of a minority group to win an election. Summary: Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case argued on April 20, 1993. See, e. g., Croson, 488 U. S., at 491-493 (opinion of O'CONNOR, J., joined by REHNQUIST, C. J., and WHITE, J. 10 This appears to be what has occurred in this instance. In the absence of an allegation of such harm, I would affirm the judgment of the District Court. Lacking support in any of the Court's precedents, the majority's novel type of claim also makes no sense. This is altogether antithetical to our system of representative democracy. Id., at 141-142; see also Richmond v. United States, 422 U. S. 358, 370-371 (1975) (annexation that reduces percentage of blacks in population satisfies 5 where postannexation districts "fairly reflect" current black voting strength). Under this approach, in the absence of an allegation of such cognizable harm, there is no need for further scrutiny because a gerrymandering claim cannot be proven without the element of harm. In the lower court record, the district was said to resemble a Rorschach ink-blot test, and theWall Street Journalclaimed the district looked like a "bug splattered on a windshield." Suppose a person who buys only wine and cheese is We emphasize that these criteria are important not because they are constitutionally required-they are not, cf. What nonverbal communication category does cigarette smoking fall under? the purchase to her American Express card. (emphasis added). Nor, because of the distinctions between the two categories, is there any risk that Fourteenth Amendment districting law as such will be taken to imply anything for purposes of general Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny about "benign" racial discrimination, or about group entitlement as distinct from individual protection, or about the appropriateness of strict or other heightened scrutiny. cases of electoral districting and one for most other types of state governmental decisions. The court agreed unanimously that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction by reason of 14(b) of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. 1973l(b), which vests the District Court for the District of Columbia with exclusive jurisdiction to issue injunctions against the execution of the Act and to enjoin actions taken by federal officers pursuant thereto. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. Under the three-part test established by Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 50-51 (1986), a minority group must show that it could constitute the majority in a single-member district, "that it is politically cohesive," and "that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." We also do not decide. Ibid. 6 This is not to say that a group that has been afforded roughly proportional representation never can make out a claim of unconstitutional discrimination. Id., at 50-51. 12(b)(6). Forty of North Carolina's one hundred counties are covered by 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U. S. C. 1973c, which prohibits a jurisdiction subject to its provisions from implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" without federal authorization, ibid. On the same reasoning, I would affirm the District Court's dismissal of appellants' claim in this instance. It is approximately 160 miles long and, for much of its length, no wider than the 1-85 corridor. In Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347 (1915), the Court invalidated under the Fifteenth Amendment a statute that imposed a literacy requirement on voters but contained a "grandfather clause" applicable to individuals and their lineal descendants entitled to vote "on [or prior to] January 1, 1866." As a result of the 1990 census, North Carolina gained one congressional seat, increasing its House membership to twelve and requiring the state legislature to redraw the state's congressional districts. Hirabayashi v. United States(1943). Consider that PC has a 35% tax rate. JOHN H. MERRILL, ALABAMA SECRETARY OF STATE, ET AL. It may be that the terms for pleading this cause of action will be met so rarely that this case will wind up an aberration. The second majority-black district, District 12, is even more unusually shaped. Another of the weapons in the States' arsenal was the racial gerrymander-"the deliberate and arbitrary distortion of district boundaries for [racial] purposes." Appellants' racial gerrymandering claims must be examined against the backdrop of this country's long history of racial discrimination in voting. But as JUSTICE WHITE points out, see ante, at 672 (dissenting opinion), and as the Court acknowledges, see ante, at 647, we have held that such principles are not constitutionally required, with the consequence that their absence cannot justify the distinct constitutional regime put in place by the Court today. Id., at 154-155. He read JUSTICE WHITE'S opinion in UJO to authorize race-based reapportionment only when the State employs traditional districting principles such as compactness and contiguity. So, too, would be a case in which a State concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district by disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions. I dissent. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the use of racial gerrymandering in North Carolina's reapportionment plan. See ante, at 642-643. Hirabayas hi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943). Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 1063 (9th ed. Ruth Shaw and four other white North Carolina voters filed suit against the U.S. attorney general and various North Carolina officials, claiming that race-based redistricting violated, among other provisions, the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Where was the Rule of Law or Legal Principle Applied? Supp., at 472-473. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters--a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to aspire. Racial gerrymanders come in various shades: At-large voting schemes, see, e. g., White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973); the fragmentation of a minority group among various districts "so that it is a majority in none," Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 153 (1993), otherwise known as "cracking," cf. SHAW v. RENO(1993) No. BLACKMUN, J., post, p. 676, STEVENS, J., post, p. 676, and SOUTER, J., post, p. 679, filed dissenting opinions. Because the holding is limited to such anomalous circumstances, it perhaps will not substantially hamper a State's legitimate efforts to redistrict in favor of racial minorities. This is altogether antithetical to our system of representative democracy. Carr. In the 17th, 19th, and 20th Districts, whites constituted respectively 94.9%, 71.5%, and 72.5% of the population. Reno. A new issue of 20-year bonds: The flotation costs of the new bonds would be 4% of the proceeds. I respectfully dissent. Despite their invocation of the ideal of a "color-blind" Constitution, see Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting), appellants appear to concede that race-conscious redistricting is not always unconstitutional. The Justices disagreed only as to whether the plaintiffs had carried their burden of proof at trial. More generally, we remarked: "The mere fact that one interest group or another concerned with the outcome of [the district's] elections has found itself outvoted and without legislative seats of its. But the State must have a "'strong basis in evidence for [concluding] that remedial action [is] necessary.'" See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 304-305 (1978) (Powell, J.) 2. 1984); and, finally, the "concentration of [minority voters] into districts where they constitute an excessive majority," Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 46, n. 11 (1986), also called "packing," Voinovich, supra, at 153. In this case, the Attorney General suggested that North Carolina could have created a reasonably compact second majority-minority district in the south-central to southeastern part of the State. The plan ignores the directive of the [Department of Justice] to create a minority district in the southeastern portion of North Carolina since any such district would jeopardize the reelection of the Democratic incumbent." See 478 U. S., at 131, n. 12 (plurality opinion). United States Supreme Court. See ante, at 634-635. upon an extraordinary justification. They have made no showing that the redistricting scheme was employed as part of a 'contrivance to segregate'; to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of a minority class or interest; or otherwise to impair or burden the opportunity of affected persons to participate in the political process." Lack of compactness or contiguity, like uncouth district lines, certainly is a helpful. Petitioners'. The principle of equality is at war with the notion that District A must be represented by a Negro, as it is with the notion that District B must be represented by a Caucasian, District C by a Jew, District D by a Catholic, and so on . That system, by whatever name it is called, is a divisive force in a community, emphasizing differences between candidates and voters that are irrelevant in the constitutional sense . "When racial or religious lines are drawn by the State, the multiracial, multireligious communities that our Constitution seeks to weld together as one become separatist; antagonisms that relate to race or to religion rather than to political issues are generated; communities seek not the best representative but the best racial or religious partisan. Shaw's group claimed that drawing districts based on race violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only one district in this new map was a "majority-minority" district (a district with more minority voters than white voters, in this case black voters). Grofman, Would Vince Lombardi Have Been Right If He Had Said: "When It Comes to Redistricting, Race Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing"?, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. Ostensibly race-neutral devices such as literacy tests with "grandfather" clauses and "good character" provisos were devised to deprive black voters of the franchise. We have indicated that similar preconditions apply in 2 challenges to single-member districts. Laws that explicitly distinguish between individuals on racial grounds fall within the core of that prohibition. Classifications of citizens on the basis of race "are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." 653-657. It reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole. Rather, the issue is whether the classification based on race discriminates. Alabama's exercise in geometry was but one example of the racial discrimination in voting that persisted in parts of this country nearly a century after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting. Five of the eight Justices who participated in the decision resolved the case under the framework the Court previously had adopted for vote-dilution cases. The difference between constitutional and unconstitutional gerrymanders has nothing to do with whether they are based on assumptions about the groups they affect, but whether their purpose is to enhance the power of the group in control of the districting process at the expense of any minority group, and thereby to strengthen the unequal distribution of electoral power.
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