several smaller, dispersed facilities? 75-104, p. 6, n. 6) (emphasis in original). They did not even claim to be white. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 277278 (1986) (plurality opinion); id., at 285 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). NO racial gerrymandering; race cannot be the sole or predominant factor in redrawing legislative boundaries; majority-minority districts. In Beer, we held that a reapportionment plan that created one majorityminority district where none existed before passed muster under 5 because it improved the position of racial minorities. The District Court in Pope dismissed appellants' claim, reasoning in part that "plaintiffs do not allege, nor can they, that the state's redistricting plan has caused them to be 'shut out of the political process.''' 634 SHAW v. RENO Opinion of the Court tutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. We said as much in Gaffney: "[C]ourts have [no] constitutional warrant to invalidate a state plan, otherwise within tolerable population limits, because it undertakes, not to minimize or eliminate the political strength of any group or party, but to recognize it and, through districting, provide a rough sort of proportional representation in the legislative halls of the State." O. Gade & H. Stillwell, North Carolina: People and Environments 65-68 (1986). What is the NPV of the new plant? In districting, by contrast, the mere placement of an individual in one district instead of another denies no one a right or benefit provided to others. 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. See id., at 55,58. Appellants allege that the revised plan, which contains district boundary lines of dramatically irregular shape, consti-. That racial bloc voting or minority political cohesion may be found to exist in some cases, of course, is no reason to treat all racial gerrymanders differently from other kinds of racial classification. As Wright demonstrates, when members of a racial group live together in one community, a reapportionment plan that concentrates members of the group in one district and excludes them from others may reflect wholly legitimate purposes. Unlike other contexts in which we have addressed the State's conscious use of race, see, e. g., Richmond v. J. The new district stretches approximately 160 miles along Interstate 85 and, for much of its length, is no wider than the 1-85 corridor. 21-24 (Powell, J., joined by STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (describing "grotesque gerrymandering" and "unusual shapes" drawn solely to deprive Democratic voters of electoral power). Although I would leave this question for another day, I would note that even then courts have insisted on "some showing of injury to assure that the district court can impose a meaningful remedy." 1. One need look no further than the Voting Rights Act to understand that this may be required, and we have held that race may constitutionally be taken into account in order to comply with that Act. A second distinction between districting and most other governmental decisions in which race has figured is that those other decisions using racial criteria characteristically occur in circumstances in which the use of race to the advantage of one person is necessarily at the obvious expense of a member of a different race. Putting that to one side, it seems utterly implausible to me to presume, as the Court does, that North Carolina's creation of this strangely shaped majority-minority district "generates" within the white plaintiffs here anything comparable to "a feeling of inferi-. The most compelling evidence of the Court's position prior to this day, for it is most directly on point, is UJO, 430 U. S. 144 (1977). In a similar vein, Justice Stewart was joined by Justice Powell in stating: "The petitioners have made no showing that a racial criterion was used as a basis for denying them their right to vote, in contravention of the Fifteenth Amendment. Indeed, because most of the nonwhite voters lived together in one area, it would have been difficult to construct voting districts without concentrations of nonwhite voters. 16-19. v. RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL, et al. We have considered the constitutionality of these practices in other Fourteenth Amendment cases and have required plaintiffs to demonstrate that the challenged practice has the purpose and effect of diluting a racial group's voting strength. The existence of bizarre and uncouth district boundaries is powerful evidence of an ulterior purpose behind the shaping of those boundaries-usually a purpose to advantage the political party in control of the districting process. Does the Equal Protection Clause prevent a State from drawing district boundaries for the purpose of. The Attorney General objected to the plan on the ground that the second district could have been created to give effect to minority voting strength in the State's south-central to southeastern region. The Court affirmed the District Court's dismissal of the complaint on the ground that plaintiffs had not met their burden of proving discriminatory intent. Appellants' racial gerrymandering claims must be examined against the backdrop of this country's long history of racial discrimination in voting. Dissenting Opinion (Harlan):. . In 1991, a group of white voters in North Carolina challenged the state's new congressional district map, which had two "majority-minority" districts. For much of our Nation's history, that right sadly has been denied to many because of race. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotypes. Id., at 56-58. It may therefore be that few electoral districting cases are ever likely to employ the strict scrutiny the Court holds to be applicable on remand if appellants' allegations are "not contradicted." a majority-minority district does not unfairly minimize the voting power of any other group, the Constitution does not justify, much less mandate, such obstruction. See ante, at 649. Ibid. 7 The Court accuses me of treating the use of race in electoral redistricting as a "benign" form of discrimination. The plaintiffs in UJO-members of a Hasidic community split between two districts under New York's revised redistricting plan-did not allege that the plan, on its face, was so highly irregular that it rationally could be understood only as an effort to segregate voters by race. Given two districts drawn on similar, race-based grounds, the one does not become more injurious than the other simply by virtue of being snakelike, at least so far as the Constitution is concerned and absent any evidence of differential racial impact. See ante, at 666-667, and n. 6 (dissenting opinion). After the 1990 census, the North Carolina General Assembly was entitled to a 12th seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and redrew its congressional districts to account for the changes in population. The other part of the majority's explanation of its holding is related to its simultaneous discomfort and fascination with irregularly shaped districts. See Appendix, infra. See Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 153-155 (1971). Justice Whittaker, however, concluded that the "unlawful segregation of races of citizens" into different voting districts was cognizable under the Equal Protection Clause. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 291 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). 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. of Oral Arg. Supp., at 476-477 (Voorhees, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The U.S. Supreme Court and the federal government should encourage states to find ways to comply with the act, even if compliance results in oddly shaped districts, the attorney argued. To comply with 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - which prohibits a covered jurisdiction from implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" without federal authorization - North Carolina submitted to the Attorney General a congressional . The Twelfth District received even harsher criticism. JUSTICE WHITE WITH WHOM JUSTICE BLACKMUN AND JUSTICE STEVENS JOIN, DISSENTING. Two others concluded that the statute did not minimize or cancel out a minority group's voting strength and that the State's intent to comply with the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the Department of Justice, "foreclose[d] any finding that [the State] acted with the invidious purpose of discriminating against white voters." In 1993, about 20% of the state population identified as Black. 10 This appears to be what has occurred in this instance. The message that such districting sends to elected representatives is equally pernicious. The dissenters consider the circumstances of this case "functionally indistinguishable" from multimember districting and at-large voting systems, which are loosely described as "other varieties of gerrymandering." The Court appears to accept this, and it does not purport to disturb the law of vote dilution in any way. Because the General Assembly's reapportionment plan affected the covered counties, the parties agree that 5 applied. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 1063 (9th ed. In addition, nothing in the Court's decisions compels the conclusion that racial and political gerrymanders are subject to the same constitutional scrutiny; in fact, this country's long and persistent history of racial discrimination in voting and the Court's Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence would seem to compel the opposite conclusion. of Oral Arg. Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. They were the first blacks to represent North Carolina, a state with a 20 percent black population, since 1901. Instead, the General Assembly enacted a revised redistricting plan, 1991 N. C. Extra Sess. 4 The majority's use of "segregation" to describe the effect of districting here may suggest that it carries effects comparable to school segregation making it subject to like scrutiny. In Gingles the Court considered a multimember redistricting plan for the North Carolina State Legislature. The Court expresses no view on whether appellants successfully could have challenged a district such as that suggested by the Attorney General or whether their complaint stated a claim under other constitutional provisions. They threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility. Since I do not agree that appellants alleged an equal protection violation and because the Court of Appeals faithfully followed the Court's prior cases, I dissent and would affirm the judgment below. See Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U. S. 217, 225 (1971); United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 385 (1968). The fact that a demonstration of discriminatory effect was required in that case was not a function of the kind of claim that was made. These lawmakers are quite aware that the districts they create will have a white or a black majority; and with each new district comes the unavoidable choice as to the racial composition of the district." Shaw v. Reno. One of the lower court judges described it as winding in a snakelike fashion through tobacco country, financial centers, and manufacturing areas until it gobbled up enough enclaves of black neighborhoods to create a majority-black district. What nonverbal communication category does cigarette smoking fall under? by Wayne R. Arden and Jeffrey M. Wice; for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law et al. It applied a three-part test, examining intent, effects, and causation. That sort of race consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination. Explain in words and with a diagram. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. Supp., at 468-469. Syllabus ; View Case ; Appellant Shaw . The ruling was significant in the area of redistricting and racial gerrymandering. 653-657. 20, 1993, p. A4. Finally, we must ask whether otherwise permissible redistricting to benefit an underrepresented minority group becomes impermissible when the minority group is defined by its race. But 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. Carr (1962) was a landmark case concerning re-apportionment and redistricting. What trade-offs are involved in deciding to have a single large, centrally located facility instead of See supra, at 642-643. You can explore additional available newsletters here. Id., at 154-155. SHAW et al. 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. Of the following two options-creation of two minority influence districts or of a single majority-minority district-is one "narrowly tailored" and the other not? 12(b)(6). R. Dixon, Democratic Representation: Reapportionment in Law and Politics 459 (1968). post, at 684-685 (dissenting opinion). to Juris. Id., at 53-54. Get free summaries of new US Supreme Court opinions delivered to your inbox! This small sample only begins to scratch the surface of the problems raised by the majority's test. When a newly created district cannot be explained by means other than race, it is subject to strict scrutiny. facilitating the election of a member of an identifiable group of voters? 1 It has been argued that the required showing of discriminatory effect should be lessened once a plaintiff successfully demonstrates intentional discrimination. 430 U. S., at 165. ("United Jewish Organizations properly is viewed as a case in which the remedy for an administrative finding of discrimination encompassed measures to improve the previously disadvantaged group's ability to participate, without excluding individuals belonging to any other group from enjoyment of the relevant opportunity-meaningful participation in the electoral process") (emphasis added). Gaffney, 412 U. S., at 752, n. 18; see ante, at 647. Consider that PC has a 35% tax rate. 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.7. 21A375 is treated as a . But it soon became apparent that guaranteeing equal access to the polls would not suffice to root out other racially discriminatory voting practices. After the Attorney General of the United States objected to the plan pursuant to 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. As was the case in New York, a number of North Carolina's political subdivisions have interfered with black citizens' meaningful exercise of the franchise and are therefore subject to 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Pleading such an element, the Court holds, suffices without a further allegation of harm, to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under the Fourteenth Amendment. It is currently at its target debtequity ratio of .60. Nor is there any support for the. Finally, like New York, North Carolina reacted by modifying its plan and creating additional majority-minority districts. The State's revised plan contained a second majority-black district in the north-central region. Since there is no justification for the departure here from the principles that continue to govern electoral districting cases generally in accordance with our prior decisions, I would not respond to the seeming egregiousness of the redistricting now before us by untethering the concept of racial gerrymander in such a case from the concept of harm exemplified by dilution. The logic of its theory appears to be that race-conscious redistricting that "segregates" by drawing odd-shaped lines is qualitatively different from race-conscious redistricting that affects groups in some other way. The Court extended the reasoning of Gomillion to congressional districting in Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U. S. 52 (1964). WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BLACKMUN and STEVENS, JJ., joined, post, p. 658. Id., at 349 (concurring opinion). The Court found that race could not be the deciding factor when drawing districts. Nor is it a particularly accurate description of what has occurred. 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." See Garza v. County of Los Angeles, 918 F.2d 763, 771 (CA9 1990). See post, at 679 (opinion of STEVENS, J. u. S. 735, 753 (1973); see also Mobile v. Bolden, supra, at 86-87 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). 460, 472 (SDNY 1962) (Murphy, J., dissenting); 376 U. S., at 54. To allow judicial interference whenever this occurs would be to invite constant and unmanageable intrusion. With WHOM JUSTICE BLACKMUN and STEVENS, JJ., joined, post, p... The first blacks to represent North Carolina reacted by modifying its plan and creating additional majority-minority districts for Rights! 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