Issue Date: April 30, 2004

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The shapes of some U.S. congressional districts have been compared to inkblots, squashed bugs and even cartoon characters. These oddly shaped districts, from which representatives are elected, are often the product of a process that occurs when districts are purposely carved out to guarantee that a specific racial or ethnic group has a majority voting bloc in the district. Such districts virtually guarantee that a representative from the targeted racial or ethnic group will be elected, and in recent years many states have been able to boost the number of minority representatives that they send to Congress by drawing these "majority-minority" districts.

U.S. representatives are elected from congressional districts which are drawn within state boundaries and include roughly the same number of people in each district. When the lines of political districts are drawn to achieve a certain ethnic or political majority, it is called "gerrymandering"--named after former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry (D), who in 1811 drew lines in his state to favor Democrats.

Yet these complex and jigsawed districts look like a renewed form of racism to many people, some of whom have compared the practice to "political apartheid." In many states, the racially gerrymandered districts have been challenged, usually by white voters who say that their equal-protection rights are being violated when racial demographics influence how districts are drawn. A backlash against these districts has been growing and could reshuffle the composition of blacks, Hispanics and Democrats in Congress in future elections.

Although criticized on both sides of the political spectrum, the gerrymandered districts are vehemently defended by many minorities and civil-rights advocates who say that they are needed to increase the number of minority representatives in Congress and give more citizens a share of democratic power. Despite civil-rights laws that make discrimination illegal and seek to boost minorities' participation in the governing process, changes in the composition of Congress and other powerful political institutions to reflect the same racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. at large have been sluggish. Over the last few years, however, a substantial number of blacks and other minorities have entered Congress, and many attribute at least part of this success to the use of racial gerrymandering.

But many people say that gerrymandering election districts is racist, and note that the practice had been struck down when whites tried to exclude blacks from gaining political power in the early part of the 20th century. They claim that the use of racial characteristics to group people perpetuates racial stereotypes that civil-rights laws sought to abolish. They compare race-based districting with the now-outlawed policies of segregation. Using race to identify, mark and carve out voting blocs impedes the struggle toward a colorblind society in which individuals' viewpoints and character define them and not skin color, they say.

Supporters of such "majority-minority" districts counter that civil-rights laws have never been race-neutral and that gerrymandering merely seeks to enfranchise blacks and other minorities that continue to be woefully underrepresented in Congress. They claim that blacks do share many political interests on account of their shared political and social history, a history that relegated them to a different class of citizen and denied them opportunities to vote. They say that district plans that create white majorities in each of a state's congressional districts virtually guarantee that only whites will be sent to represent the state, even if blacks comprise a substantial minority in the state. Policies that send only whites to Congress are no less race-conscious than districts gerrymandered to aid minorities, they claim.

The main arbitrator of the debate over racial gerrymandering has been the Supreme Court. In a series of cases over the last few years, the court has tried to restrict the use of race as a criterion for drawing election districts. Yet the court has also recognized a need for states to comply with civil-rights laws and redress past forms of political discrimination against blacks. The court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to use race as a "predominant factor" in districting, but has left many other questions unanswered.

Black Gains During Reconstruction

During the early years of Reconstruction, the period immediately following the Civil War when Southern states were slowly rejoining the U.S., blacks made substantial political gains. Forty blacks were elected to Congress between 1870 and 1896, and many more held positions as state legislators, sheriffs and local officials.

These successes were due, in part, to the passage of two amendments added to the Constitution that sought to enfranchise blacks politically. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, guaranteed that all U.S. citizens have equal rights under the law, and the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, explicitly gave voting rights to black men. In addition to these amendments, Southern states in the late 1800s were monitored by federal troops and were required to provide equal voting rights to blacks in order to regain admission to the Union.

Most of the early political gains of blacks were short lived. The last remaining black member from that era, a representative from North Carolina, left office in 1901. No black person was elected to Congress from the South again until 1972, when Rep. Barbara Johnson (D) won a seat in Texas and Andrew Young (D) was elected in Georgia. The political setback of blacks at the end of the 19th century was the result of several Supreme Court rulings--Minor v. Happersett (1875), U.S. v. Reese (1876) and U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)--that gave the states greater power to determine who was eligible to vote. The 15th Amendment guaranteed that a person's fundamental rights could not be taken away on account of race, the court declared, but it also ruled that voting was not a fundamental right.

These rulings, followed by a retreat of federal oversight in the South, prompted many states to limit who could vote. Although states could not explicitly deny voting privileges on the basis of race, many states excluded blacks indirectly, employing means such as literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes, which required voters to pay a fee before they were permitted to cast a ballot. Grandfather clauses exempted voters from having to take literacy tests if they could prove that their ancestors were eligible to vote prior to 1867, a period when blacks were disenfranchised. The clauses, which effectively required blacks to take literacy tests but exempted many illiterate whites, were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1915, in Gwinn v. U.S.

Although the Supreme Court has given states fairly wide discretion in drawing congressional districts according to their own criteria, the court ruled for the first time in 1960 that the 15th Amendment barred states from using race as a basis for drawing congressional districts. By drawing district lines through the middle of largely black areas, many Southern states had purposefully diluted the voting power of blacks by ensuring that blacks did not make up a majority in any one district. In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional an election district in Alabama that was drawn to keep black voting power in the city of Tuskegee to a minimum. Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, "The inescapable human effect of this essay in geometry and geography is to despoil colored citizens, and only colored citizens, of their theretofore enjoyed voting rights."

The Voting Rights Act

In 1964, then-President Lyndon Johnson (D) signed the Civil Rights Act, which made it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of a person's race, national origin, religion or sex in areas such as employment and housing. Although the law was hailed by civil-rights leaders as a sign of progress, many wanted the federal government to take even stronger measures to break down the obstacles to voting that Southern states had erected. Nearly half of the nation's black population still lived in the South, but only a small percentage could vote. In 1965, for example, blacks comprised 30% of Louisiana's population, but only 14% of the state's eligible voters; in Mississippi, blacks comprised 42% of the population, but less than 6% of voters.

Civil-rights crusader Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a voter-registration drive in Alabama in 1965. In March of that year, he led a march from Selma, Ala. to Montgomery, the state's capital, as a protest of voting policies in the South. The march ended when nearly 200 state troopers, armed with nightsticks and tear gas, clashed with the marchers. The brutality of the conflict was assailed by Johnson, who provided federal troops to protect the marchers. The president subsequently introduced to Congress the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law in August 1965. [See 1996 Origins of the Voting Rights Act]

The Voting Rights Act suspended the use of literacy tests for voter registration and gave the federal government the power to sue states that impede blacks from registering to vote. (Literacy tests for determining voter eligibility were banned permanently by an act of Congress in 1975.) The act also requires nine Southern states and parts of seven others to get approval from federal supervisors whenever changes are made to their voter-registration rules or policies.

The Voting Rights Act was amended by Congress in 1982 in order to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court decision in Mobile v. Bolden that limited the reach of the act. The Supreme Court ruled that a voting policy or procedure violates the Voting Rights Act only if it can be shown that the intent of the policy is discriminatory. The 1982 amendments, the focus of the current debate on redistricting, extended the act to cover policies that have the effect of discrimination.

Shaw v. Reno

The Supreme Court appeared to side with the 1982 amendments in its Thornburg v. Gingles ruling in 1986. In that case, the court ruled that the failure of North Carolina's congressional districts to elect a black representative was enough evidence to show discrimination, even if there were no intent to discriminate.

After the 1990 census, many states needed to redraw their electoral maps to adjust to shifting and expanding populations, and a number of majority-minority districts were carved out of states to favor blacks and other minorities politically. Often these districts were formed at the urging of the Justice Department, which rejected congressional districts that did not, in its view, provide adequate political opportunities for minorities.

Yet many of the majority-black districts were drawn in patterns that appeared erratic and bizarre, sometimes wandering for hundreds of miles across a state in sharp twists and turns to include small pockets of black residents. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), a group of white plaintiffs from North Carolina challenged that state's 12th congressional district on the grounds that the serpentine district was gerrymandered to ensure black political representation. The group of white voters claimed that their 14th Amendment rights, guaranteeing equal protection under the law, were violated.

In a sharply divided decision, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that "bizarrely" or "irrationally" shaped districts that were drawn for the sole purpose of guaranteeing black representatives were unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the North Carolina plan "resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past." O'Connor suggested that "traditional districting principles," such as compactness, contiguity and shared community interests, could provide a race-neutral guide for drawing districts.

Shaw Decision Criticized

Supporters of the gerrymandered North Carolina districts and similar districts in other states sharply disagree with the court's ruling in Shaw. They argue that race-conscious districting does not violate the Voting Rights Act or the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. They claim that states can use race as a motivating factor in planning districts when minority representation is increased, but white representation is not decreased. In his dissenting opinion in Shaw, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the "duty to govern impartially... is not violated when the majority acts to facilitate the election of a member of a group that lacks power."

Many civil-rights groups claim that majority-minority districts are necessary in some cases in order to balance the voting power of whites. North Carolina's population currently is 76% white and 22% black, but even under the redistricting plan that establishes two majority-black districts, whites still make up majorities in 10 of the 12 districts, or about 83% of the 12 districts. According to defenders of the gerrymandered districts, these figures show that whites are not underrepresented in the state under the districting plans. They also note that the two elected legislators from the majority-black districts--Rep. Melvin Watt (D) from the 12th district and Rep. Eva Clayton (D) from the 1st district--are the first blacks to represent North Carolina in Congress since 1901.

The court further tightened its stand on race-conscious districting in Miller v. Johnson, in June 1995. In Miller, the court upheld a lower court ruling that struck down Georgia's 11th congressional district. Georgia's 11th was drawn to include a black majority, but the district is not one of the most irregularly shaped districts in the state. The court ruled that districts can be challenged whenever race is the "predominant factor" that determines their boundaries, regardless of their shapes.

In the majority decision in Miller, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the "observation in Shaw of the consequences of racial stereotyping was not meant to suggest that a district must be bizarre on its face before there is a constitutional violation." Rather, the court ruled that race-conscious districting is permitted only if it met a standard of "strict scrutiny" that requires states to show a "compelling state interest" in redressing past discrimination.

Hailed by many conservatives and lambasted by many liberals, the court's decisions in Shaw and Miller appeared to signal what many view as a more conservative trend in the court's decisions on race issues. In its Adarand Constructors v. Pena ruling in 1995, the Supreme Court also required federal affirmative-action programs--policies that seek to provide greater opportunities for minorities and women in government-funded projects--to pass the strict scrutiny standard. [See 1995 Affirmative Action]

Minority Seats Threatened

Challenges to majority-minority districts in Florida, Illinois, Virginia and New York are currently being considered in federal courts. In light of the Shaw and Miller rulings, federal courts in Texas and Louisiana have ruled unconstitutional majority-minority districts in those states. [See 1996 Current Challenges To Race-Based Districts]

Many civil-rights activists say that the backlash against race-based districting will curb the political strides that blacks have been making in the 1990s. President Clinton (D) called the Miller decision a "setback in the struggle to ensure that all Americans participate fully in the electoral process." Since the national census in 1990 and the redistricting in the years that followed, the number of Hispanic-and black-majority congressional districts has jumped to 52, from 26. The number of Hispanics in Congress rose to 17 in the current 104th Congress, from 12 in 1990. The number of blacks in Congress increased by 50% in the 1992 elections to 39 members--the same number of seats that are currently held by blacks.

Many of the gains were especially evident in the South, where 12 new black representatives were elected to Congress in the years following redistricting in the early 1990s, the most black members to represent the South since Reconstruction. Under the new apportionment schemes, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia sent blacks to Congress for the first time since the beginning of the 20th century.

Civil-rights activist fear that more districts will be challenged and could cause the number of blacks in Congress to plummet, especially in the South. In December 1995, a federal court in Atlanta, Ga. redrew the state's congressional map to replace the districting plan that had been ruled unconstitutional in Miller. The new map, likely to be appealed, eliminates two of three majority-black districts in the state. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the black Democrat who represents the 11th district, will see the black population of her district dwindle to 33%, from 60%. McKinney said she would fight to keep her district. "I do not intend to be a willing participant in this disempowerment of black voters," she vowed.

Support for Racial Gerrymandering

Proponents of race-based districts contend that blacks in different regions of the state may have more political interests in common than they do with whites in their own areas. In states where the black population is geographically dispersed, some irregularly shaped districts may be necessary to unite those interests, they claim. They argue that there is no reason why geography should trump race as the standard for drawing congressional districts, since blacks in the U.S. have a common social and political history.

In a dissent in Miller, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that "by their very nature," districting schemes "assemble people in groups." She claimed that it is a "political reality" that "ethnicity defines some of these groups" and noted that there were no challenges to districts that group Irish or Italian voters together.

Courts have allowed districts to be drawn in order to group members of political parties and people with shared community interests, and to protect incumbents. The decision by the court to bar considerations of race when these other factors are permitted ignores the common political interests that many blacks and other minorities may share, according to those who support race-based districting. "Whenever you pretend that nonracial interests are the only important considerations, blacks and Hispanics come out on the bottom," says Elaine Jones, a director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Jones and others contend that race is already used as a factor by many whites, especially in the South, where they say whites are reluctant to vote for black candidates. Lani Guinier, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pa., noted in a New York Times editorial (January 8, 1995), "In the 1980s in North Carolina, more than 80% of white voters would not vote for a black candidate even when their only other choice was to vote for no one."

Guinier's nomination for the federal post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was withdrawn by Clinton in 1993 amidst accusations that she supported the use of quotas for placing minority and women candidates into public office.

Are Race-Based Districts Racist?

Those who oppose race-based districting claim that the use of race characteristics as a tool to end discrimination and racial disparities is inappropriate and ineffective. They argue that by grouping blacks into voting blocs, states are perpetuating the stereotype that all blacks share the same political and social views. The 1964 Civil Rights Act is undermined, they say, when race becomes the criteria on which political power is apportioned--a practice which they say the civil-rights movement sought to end. They argue that discrimination cannot end discrimination.

"Racial classifications for the purposes of drawing districts is inherently evil," according to Edward Blum, chairman of the Campaign for a Color-Blind America (CCBA), a Texas-based organization that has provided legal help to plaintiffs who challenge race-based voting districts. The CCBA is helping to finance a challenge to New York's largely Hispanic 12th congressional district on the grounds that the district, which snakes through three boroughs of New York City, was drawn solely to guarantee a Hispanic representative.

Some people feel that the effort to maximize minority voting strength through redistricting could lead to the use of quotas, which would guarantee political seats for minorities. While a few policy makers back quotas as necessary to ensure minority representation, most people remain strongly opposed to any quota system at the ballot box.

Divisions Among Blacks and Democrats

Not all black politicians view racial gerrymandering favorably. Black Rep. Gary Franks (R, Conn.) represents a district that is mostly white. He criticizes majority-minority districts as "set-asides" for blacks and other minorities. "It's very sensible that we cannot allow districts to be race-driven," he says. Many people say that, despite Guinier's comments about white North Carolinians' refusal to vote for any blacks, whites will, and do, vote blacks into political office when they are the right candidates for the job. They point to the strong interracial following apparently enjoyed by Gen. Colin Powell, the black former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he suggested he might run for president.

The debate over redistricting also has pitted black Democrats against many white Democrats, who oppose racial gerrymandering, claiming that white Republicans are the biggest winners of majority-black districts. Since a large majority of blacks are Democrats, the concentration of black voters in majority-minority districts has the side effect of diluting the number of Democrats in other districts in the state. Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York City, explains, "What's really worrisome is to have these overwhelmingly white districts, which have no blacks as a swing vote, because the blacks have all been packed into these racially gerrymandered districts."

Many analysts contend that the tremendous gains enjoyed by Republicans in the South are at least partly the result of the creation of the black-majority districts. Georgia, for example, now sends eight white Republicans and three black Democrats to Congress; as recently as 1992, nine Democrats (only one of whom was black) and one only one Republican represented the state.

According to Albert Hunt, a Wall Street Journal columnist, the Supreme Court's recent rulings restricting race-based districting will ultimately help blacks politically. "Fifteen years from now, there may be three or four fewer African-American congressmen," he says, "But there may also be a dozen or more new white lawmakers empathetic to black concerns."

Hunt and others say that the defeat of black-majority districts will benefit Democratic blacks and whites by forcing them to cross racial lines and find common political ground. "The best chance at color-blindness is creating districts that elect candidates who depend on biracial coalitions," says A. Lee Parks, the lawyer who argued against Georgia's black-majority district before the Supreme Court in Miller.

Future Developments

Two cases concerning race-based congressional redistricting, Bush v. Vera and Shaw v. Hunt, have come before the Supreme Court during its current 1995-96 session, but the court has not yet handed down decisions. The court's decisions in the two cases are expected to help clarify unresolved questions about the role that race can play when legislators draw districts.

In December 1995, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in Bush v. Vera, a case in which other factors besides race may have also contributed to the shape of three Texas districts. A federal court in Dallas, Texas struck down the three districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The federal court recognized, however, that the shape of the districts also protected the incumbency of white politicians in surrounding districts. The Texas court noted that Texas has a tradition of drawing districts to protect incumbency, a policy that courts have supported in the past.

In Miller, the court ruled that race cannot be the "predominant factor" that motivates how districts are drawn, so its decision in Bush may specify the degree to which race can play subordinate roles, if any, when districts are drawn. Supporters of the Texas congressional districts argue that simply because districts turn out to include majority-minority populations, this does not necessarily mean that they were drawn according to racial demographics.

In a second case argued before the Supreme Court in December 1995, Shaw v. Hunt, the court may be forced to clarify when states are justified in providing greater voting power to blacks. In its earlier decision in Shaw v. Reno, the court ruled that majority-minority districts were unconstitutional in the absence of a "compelling state interest" to redress past discrimination.

The Court's decision in Shaw v. Hunt may resolve the mixed messages that many states say the government is sending with regard to black voting rights. On the one hand, the Voting Rights Act and its amendments were passed to redress the lack of black political power in the U.S., particularly in the South. Since it was drawn as a specific remedy for discrimination against blacks, the act appears to conflict with the Supreme Court's mandate not to use race as a predominant factor in gerrymandering electoral districts.

If majority-minority districts are ruled unconstitutional, blacks and other minorities may lose many congressional seats in future elections. Some people say this would be a blow to representative democracy, since our most powerful political institutions would not mirror the multiracial and multiethnic diversity of the country. Others contend that racial characteristics are a shallow basis for grouping people's political concerns, and say that race-based districts have divided political parties, which form a better basis of affinity. They note that Democrats may become more competitive with Republicans for congressional seats if the largely Democratic voting bloc of blacks is diluted among more districts.

The full effect of the court's decisions on current cases involving race-based districting may not be felt for several years. Even if they are struck down, most congressional districts that are currently being challenged will not be redrawn until the appeals process is completed. Most districts will remain in their current form at least until the next elections in November 1996, and as the next census in the year 2000 nears, questions of racial gerrymandering and minority representation will likely remain sensitive political issues.

Bibliography

Applebome, P. "Fitting Designer Districts into Off-the-Rack Democracy." New York Times (September 25, 1994): D4.

Applebome, P. "Georgia District Ruling is Test for Racial Politics." New York Times (September 19, 1994): B1.

Biskupic, J. "'Majority-Minority' House Districts Face Court Test." Washington Post (December 5, 1995): A9.

Cook, R. "Race-Based Districts Squeeze Democrats." Congressional Quarterly Weekly (July 22, 1995): 2226.

Economist (August 27, 1994). "After Modigliani": 21.

Greenhouse, L. "Court Questions Districts Drawn to Aid Minorities." New York Times (June 29, 1993): A1.

Greenhouse, L. "On Voting Rights, Court Faces a Tangled Web." New York Times (July 12, 1995): A1.

Gruenwald, J. "Court Ruling Expected to Spark More Suits." Congressional Quarterly Weekly (July 1, 1995): 1947.

Guinier, L. "Don't Scapegoat the Gerrymander." New York Times (January 8, 1995): A36.

Hunt, A. "Racial Redistricting Hurts African-Americans." Wall Street Journal (December 21, 1995): A15.

Idelson, H. "Court Takes a Harder Line on Minority Voting Blocs." Congressional Quarterly Weekly (July 1, 1995): 1944.

Merida, K. "ACLU to Appeal Decision Remapping Ga. Districts." Washington Post (December 15, 1995): A3

Merida, K.; Biskupic, J. "Court Panel Redraws Ga. Voting Map." Washington Post (December 14, 1995): A1.

Parks, A.L. "Georgia's Unholy Alliance." New York Times (August 23, 1995): A21.

Raspberry, W. "Drawing the Line On Fairness." Washington Post (December 4, 1995): A19.

Roberts, P.; Stratton, L. "Proliferation of Privilege." National Review (November 6, 1995): 41.

Sack, K. "Court Draws Georgia Map of Congressional Districts." New York Times (December 14, 1995): A22.

Sack, K. "Georgia Tries to Redraw Voting Map Based on Race." New York Times (August 15, 1995): A12.

Smothers, R. "U.S. District Court Upholds 'Gerrymander' for Blacks." New York Times (August 3, 1994): A12.

Witt, E. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1990.

Contact Information

Information on how to contact the organizations that are mentioned in the discussion of racial gerrymandering is mentioned below:

Keywords and Points

For further information about the ongoing debate over racial gerrymandering, search for the following words and terms in electronic databases and other publications:

Racial Gerrymandering

Since ICOF last covered racial gerrymandering in March 1996, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions on the matter, ultimately finding that a state legislature could regard race as a factor in its redistricting process as long as it was not the main consideration. Among the key events:

• A panel of three federal judges ruled on April 17, 1996, that Florida's black-majority 3rd District was unconstitutional. Ordering the district redrawn, the panel said that Florida's legislature had improperly used race as its main criterion for determining the district's boundaries. [See 1996 Facts on File: Congress--Florida District Ruled Unconstitutional.]
• In two separate cases dealing with race-based redistricting plans, the Supreme Court ruled on June 13, 1996, to strike down majority black and Hispanic congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina. In the cases, Bush v. Vera and Shaw v. Hunt, both 5-4 rulings, the court found that the districts were racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th Amendment and said that race had been too large a factor in drawing their boundaries. In Bush v. Vera the justices nullified Texas's 18th, 29th and 30th congressional districts, and in Shaw v. Hunt they invalidated North Carolina's 12th Congressional District. On the following September 23, in what was the first court decision to invalidate state legislative districts for racial gerrymandering after the Supreme Court's June rulings, a panel of federal judges in Columbia, South Carolina ruled that nine of South Carolina's 170 legislative districts were invalid because they had been drawn solely on the basis of race. [See 1996 Facts on File: Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Electoral Districts, State and Local Government.]
• On June 19, 1997, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, to uphold an electoral districting map for the state of Georgia that left the state with just one black-majority congressional district. The case was Abrams v. Johnson. In 1995 the court had invalidated Georgia's previous districting plan, saying that the use of race as a "predominant factor" in drawing up electoral districts was unconstitutional. The Justice Department and a group of black voters represented by the American Civil Liberties Union had brought the case. They argued that the court panel should have maintained at least two black-majority districts, because the state legislature had indicated its support for two such districts. [See 1997 Facts on File: Supreme Court--Georgia Districting Plan Upheld.]
• On October 27, 1999, a panel of federal judges in Key West, Florida dismissed a lawsuit contending that legislative districts in southern Florida had been drawn to ensure the election of minority lawmakers. The suit has been filed the previous year by Republican Thomas Fouts, who had unsuccessfully run for a state Senate seat. Fouts, who was white, asked the court to order the redrawing of three congressional districts and two state Senate districts, which he maintained were configured so as to discriminate against non-Hispanic whites. [See 1999 Facts on File: Politics--Florida Redistricting Suit Dismissed; Other Developments.]
• The Supreme Court, on April 18, 2001, finally settled the long-running dispute over North Carolina's 12th Congressional District, which the court had previously visited in Shaw v. Hunt in 1996. In the case Easley v. Cromartie (formerly Hunt v. Cromartie), the court ruled, 5-4, that the district's boundaries, which had been drawn in an apparent attempt to provide more representation to the state's black voters, were constitutional. The court thus clarified the rules it had previously outlined that determined when and how state legislatures could consider a region's racial demographics when redistricting. It confirmed its earlier assertions that a legislature could consider, but not rely predominantly on, race when redrawing a congressional district and specified what a party was required to prove in order to successfully challenge such a district. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer explained that a legislature could consider race as a factor in its redistricting process as long as it was not the "dominant and controlling" factor in its decisions. Two years before, on May 17,1999, the court had unanimously ruled that a lower court had erred by declaring North Carolina's 12th Congressional District an unconstitutional racial gerrymander without evaluating the motivations of state legislators who had drawn the district's boundaries. At the time, the justices held that the district could be constitutional if the legislators' main intention in drawing it was political rather than racial. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the 1999 decision, did not change the court's precedents on race-based districting but instead emphasized that plaintiffs challenging a district's constitutionality had to prove that race had been the "predominant factor" in drawing the district's boundaries. [See 1999 Facts on File: Supreme Court--North Carolina Black-Represented District Reprieved, 2001 Facts on File: Supreme Court Upholds Contested North Carolina District.]
• In the case of Georgia v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, on June 26, 2003, that the Voting Rights Act allowed Southern states to redraw legislative districts to lower the number of districts in which minorities formed large voting majorities, as long as the intent was to widen their overall political influence, not narrow it. The high court overturned a prior court ruling that had found that a 2001 Georgia redistricting of state Senate districts was in violation of the Voting Rights Act because it reduced black majorities in three districts first drawn in 1997. [See 2003 Facts on File: Supreme Court--Race-Based Redistricting Rules Eased.]