Supreme Court tosses Republican-drawn North Carolina voting districts

[AndaliteBandit]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN18I1SG

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Republicans in North Carolina unlawfully took race into consideration when drawing congressional district boundaries, concentrating black voters in an improper bid to diminish their statewide political clout.

The justices upheld a lower court's February 2016 ruling that threw out two majority-black U.S. House of Representatives districts because Republican lawmakers improperly used race as a factor when redrawing the legislative map after the 2010 census.

The decision came in one of a number of lawsuits accusing Republicans of taking steps at the state level to disenfranchise black and other minority voters who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The justices found that the manner in which the North Carolina voting district boundaries were sketched violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. The ruling may offer a roadmap for challenging similarly drawn districts nationwide.

The justices unanimously upheld the lower court on one of the districts and split 5-3 on the other, with three conservatives dissenting.

"The North Carolina Republican legislature tried to rig congressional elections by drawing unconstitutional districts that discriminated against African-Americans and that's wrong," said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat took office in January.

Critics accused Republicans of cramming black voters into what the NAACP civil rights group called "apartheid voting districts" to diminish their voting power and make surrounding districts more white and more likely to support Republicans. Both districts are held by the Democrats. Of North Carolina's 13 representatives in the U.S. House, 10 are Republican.

"I don't know how any legislature can perform this task when the rules change constantly from case to case, often after the fact," Robin Hayes, chairman of the state Republican Party, said of redistricting.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking a number of actions at the state level, also including laws imposing new requirements on voters such as presenting certain types of government-issued identification, in a bid to suppress the vote of minorities, the poor and others who generally favor Democratic candidates.

Republicans have said the laws are needed to prevent voter fraud.

Race can be considered in redrawing boundaries of voting districts only in certain instances, such as when states are seeking to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. That law protects minority voters and was enacted to address a history of racial discrimination in voting, especially in Southern states.

'RACIAL GERRYMANDERING'

Eric Holder, who was U.S. attorney general under President Barack Obama and now heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group backing Democrats in redistricting fights, welcomed the decision.

"Today's ruling sends a stark message to legislatures and governors around the country: Racial gerrymandering is illegal and will be struck down in a court of law," Holder said, referring to altering political boundaries to give a party an unfair advantage.

The ruling was a rebuke to North Carolina Republicans but the districts in question have already been re-drawn. The new districts already have been challenged in court.

The Supreme Court has never said legislative districts cannot be mapped based on plainly partisan aims like maximizing one party's election chances.

North Carolina Republicans said one of the two districts, called the 12th congressional district, was drawn on purely partisan grounds to benefit Republicans at the expense of Democrats, and the other was drawn to comply with the demands of the Voting Rights Act.

The split among the justices was over the 12th district. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in dissent that the court should have followed an earlier precedent in which a previous version of the same district was challenged.

"A precedent of this court should not be treated like a disposable household item -- say a paper plate or a napkin -- to be used once and then tossed in the trash," Alito wrote.

Writing for the court's majority, liberal Justice Elena Kagan countered that evidence at trial "adequately supports the conclusion that race, not politics, accounted for the district's reconfiguration." Conservative Clarence Thomas, the court's only black justice, joined Kagan's ruling.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when it heard arguments in the case in December, did not participate.

The justices last week rebuffed a Republican bid to revive a strict North Carolina voter-identification law that a lower court found deliberately discriminated against black voters.

The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling driven by its conservative justices. Since then it has faulted some Republican redistricting efforts for racial reasons. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's Republican-backed legislature improperly crammed black voters into certain districts.

The justices on March 1 ordered a lower court to reassess whether Virginia's Republican-led legislature unlawfully tried to dilute the power of black voters. The justices threw out the lower court's decision upholding 12 state legislature districts.

[Garnier Fructis]

Tl;dr: Supreme Court finds that Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are racist.

And nobody is shocked.

[AndaliteBandit]

Tl;dr: Supreme Court finds that Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are racist.

Their voter ID law was found to be discriminatory as well.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ar...-black-voters/

Turns out their voter ID law was intended to prevent voter fraud as much as women's health bills are intended to do anything positive whatsoever for women's health. Who would have thought?

[Thepersona]

Where's tha special poster who thought that the SCOTUS would rule conservative?

[Kiri]

Where's tha special poster who thought that the SCOTUS would rule conservative?

There was one? I thought people were mostly irked by how he got there, not because he was super conservative.

[PACOX]

I thought their boy Gors was supposed to look out for them. Keep winning.

[Garnier Fructis]

I thought their boy Gors was supposed to look out for them. Keep winning.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when it heard arguments in the case in December, did not participate.

But even if Gorsuch had participated, it wouldn't have changed the final outcome since it was unanimous in one and 5-3 in the other.

[Lenonis]

I would like people who argue against the GOP engaging in voter suppression to come in this thread and see what they have to say.

I'm glad this got tossed out. Many more need to get tossed out as well. This is pretty vile stuff when you get down to it -- voting is a fundamental right.

[Kujako]

I would like people who argue against the GOP engaging in voter suppression to come in this thread and see what they have to say.

"bla, bla, liberal judges, overstepping their role, politicizing laws, etc.'

[Thepersona]

There was one? I thought people were mostly irked by how he got there, not because he was super conservative.

Yeah, the poster starts with an R or with an O

[Moralgy]

I'm about as shocked as when I touch metal after getting out of my car.

[Berengil]

Tl;dr: Supreme Court finds that Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are racist.

And nobody is shocked.

Indeed. Also in the news: fire hot, water wet, sky blue.

Honestly, who do these S.O.B.s think they are fooling? This crap is blatantly racist.

[TZucchini]

WOW. Conservatives in NC get caught drawing districts based on race.

Such a liberal and activist Supreme Court!

[Independent voter]

Both Democrats and Republicans do this, whoever is power tries to keep the edge.

[Noxx79]

Both Democrats and Republicans do this, whoever is power tries to keep the edge.

No, not the same as blantantly racist redrawing of lines.

Both parties gerrymander, the republicans were stupid enough to make it obviously based on race.

[cubby]

I would like people who argue against the GOP engaging in voter suppression to come in this thread and see what they have to say.

I'm glad this got tossed out. Many more need to get tossed out as well. This is pretty vile stuff when you get down to it -- voting is a fundamental right.

Completely agree. If people ever looked at some of the redistricting maps they would go INSANE.

- - - Updated - - -

Both Democrats and Republicans do this, whoever is power tries to keep the edge.

Both Democrats and Republicans do this, whoever is power tries to keep the edge.

and

No, not the same as blantantly racist redrawing of lines.

Both parties gerrymander, the republicans were stupid enough to make it obviously based on race.

Bullshit like this cannot stand. Both parties . . . blah blah something Breitbart covered this already blah. Politicians in general gerrymand, of course, but ONLY the GOP has such ridiculous racial bias behind their voter laws. It's beyond reprehensible. It's why people can throw the word racist around and be correct - because they are.

They NOT the same thing.

[Slybak]

What's groundbreaking about the opinion is that it establishes a partisan/racial proxy relationship with respect to gerrymandering when creating districts that have a strong partisan/racial correlation.

In other words, you can't create a partisan gerrymander - districts that favor one party over another (which is legal) - if the effect is a racial gerrymander, or districts that limit the representation of racial categories, in areas where there is a strong correlation between party membership and race (like most of the South). Even if, as the NC GOP did, you shout "We're doing this to create a partisan advantage, not a racial one" when you draw up the map. That's pretty significant, and will have a pretty big effect on other gerrymandering cases down the road.

It's also one of the rare instances when Justice Thomas's... uh... unique... jurisprudence is advantageous; he doesn't believe the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting, and NC argued that the VRA permitted certain kinds of racial gerrymanders as a means of "representational balance."

[Xeones]

Now lets hope they do something about the rest of the gerrymandered districts and million+ stolen votes.

[Ripster42]

What's groundbreaking about the opinion is that it establishes a partisan/racial proxy relationship with respect to gerrymandering when creating districts that have a strong partisan/racial correlation.

In other words, you can't create a partisan gerrymander - districts that favor one party over another (which is legal) - if the effect is a racial gerrymander, or districts that limit the representation of racial categories, in areas where there is a strong correlation between party membership and race (like most of the South). Even if, as the NC GOP did, you shout "We're doing this to create a partisan advantage, not a racial one" when you draw up the map. That's pretty significant, and will have a pretty big effect on other gerrymandering cases down the road.

It's also one of the rare instances when Justice Thomas's... uh... unique... jurisprudence is advantageous; he doesn't believe the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting, and NC argued that the VRA permitted certain kinds of racial gerrymanders as a means of "representational balance."

It's not legal, the supreme court has just said they don't have a test to determine when a party is gerrymandering along partisan lines and so cannot rule on the issue of specific maps (Vlieth v Jubelirer & Davis v Bandemer). With newer analytic approaches they're starting to get a metric to be able to tell when they're gerrymandering along partisan lines and so may now have a test to rule on those issues. In fact, the supreme court has decided to see if current analytics have reached the point where they can make a ruling and have taken up partisan gerrymandering as a case in 2017.

Edit: Going to edit this for source on the reason they're not ruling on the constitutionality of specific maps and their original ruling that partisan gerrymandering is illegal if they had a workable test.

[Kanariya]

Gerrymandering should be outright illegal nationwide already. Sad it isn't. Especially since GOP gerrymandering is 100% racially motivated.