808 F. 339." Syllabus ; View Case ; Appellant Shaw . that the white voters who brought the suit could not prove they had been injured in any way by the redistricting plan, and second, that the redistricting plan was an attempt to equalize treatment by providing minority voters with an effective voice in the political process, not an attempt to strip voting power from a particular group. 808 F. Supp. u. S. 735, 753 (1973); see also Mobile v. Bolden, supra, at 86-87 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). ority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." The first of the two majority-black districts contained in the revised plan, District 1, is somewhat hook shaped. 639-652. The determinative consideration for the Court was that the law, though ostensibly race neutral, on its face "embod[ied] no exercise of judgment and rest[ed] upon no discernible reason" other than to circumvent the prohibitions of the Fifteenth Amendment. . Id., at 179 (opinion concurring in judgment) (some citations omitted). The North Carolina Republican Party and individual voters brought suit in Federal District Court, alleging that the plan constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander under Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109 (1986). Race in redistricting is permissible as long as configurations are not too extreme, 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. 808 F. The three-judge District Court granted the federal appellees' motion to dismiss. They contend that the State's black population is too dispersed to support two geographically compact majority-black districts, as the bi-. It is also unnecessary to decide at this stage of the litigation whether the plan advances a state interest distinct from the Act: eradicating the effects of past racial discrimination. Clause" (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 630-631 (1991) ("If our society is to continue to progress as a multiracial democracy, it must recognize that the automatic invocation of race stereotypes retards that progress and causes continued hurt and injury"). Id., at 472-473. UJO's framework simply does not apply where, as here, a reapportionment plan is alleged to be so irrational on its face that it immediately offends principles of racial equality. But the State must have a "'strong basis in evidence for [concluding] that remedial action [is] necessary.'" Fast Facts: Baker v. Carr First, they suggest that a racial gerrymander of the sort alleged here is functionally equivalent to gerrymanders for nonracial purposes, such as political gerrymanders. See, e.g.,Rogers v. Lodge(1982);White v. Regester(1973). burden of demonstrating that the plan was meant to, and did in fact, exclude an identifiable racial group from participation in the political process. Appellants sued the Governor of North Carolina, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, and members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (state appellees), together with two federal officials, the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division (federal appellees). This case involves two of the most complex and sensitive issues this Court has faced in recent years: the meaning of the constitutional "right" to vote, and the propriety of racebased state legislation designed to benefit members of historically disadvantaged racial minority groups. 2 It should be noted that 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids any State to impose specified devices or procedures that result in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color. SHAW ET AL. As the Court noted, the "inevitable effect of this redefinition of Tuskegee's boundaries" was "to deprive the Negro petitioners discriminatorily of the benefits of residence in Tuskegee." We emphasize that these criteria are important not because they are constitutionally required-they are not, cf. Thus, "an equal protection violation may be found only where the electoral system substantially disadvantages certain voters in their opportunity to influence the political process effectively." 1973). (emphasis added). 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." See Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S., at 118-127. 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. As Justice Douglas explained in his dissent inWright v. Rockefellernearly 30 years ago: "Here the individual is important, not his race, his creed, or his color. 3. We have indicated that similar preconditions apply in 2 challenges to single-member districts. In our view, the court used the wrong analysis. Shortly after the complaint in Pope v. Blue was filed, appellants instituted the present action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. In other words, the purposeful creation of a majority-minority district could have discriminatory effect if it is achieved by means of "packing"-i. e., overconcentration of minority voters. North Carolina's initial reapportionment effort included one district purposefully constructed to have a majority of black voters. Majority Opinion/Decision. cases of electoral districting and one for most other types of state governmental decisions. Following is the Case Brief for Baker v. Carr, United States Supreme Court, (1962) Case Summary of Baker v. Carr: A Tennessee resident brought suit against the Secretary of State claiming that the failure to redraw the legislative districts every ten years, as outlined in the state constitution, resulted in rural votes holding more votes . Ante, at 646 (emphasis in original). See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337. The VRA required an increase in the representation of minority groups. The balances for the accounts that follow appear in the Adjusted Trial Balance columns of the end-of-period spreadsheet. the question in gerrymandering cases is "whether a particular group has been unconstitutionally denied its chance to effectively influence the political process," id., at 132-133. Ostensibly race-neutral devices such as literacy tests with "grandfather" clauses and "good character" provisos were devised to deprive black voters of the franchise. (b) Classifications of citizens based solely on race are by their nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality, because they threaten to stigmatize persons by reason of their membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. ); post, at 684, and n. 6 (opinion of SOUTER, J. tion. 42 U. S. C. 1973c; see also 1973b(f)(2). See UJO, 430 U. S., at 165-166 (plurality opinion of WHITE, J., joined by STEVENS and REHNQUIST, JJ. If it is permissible to draw boundaries to provide adequate representation for rural voters, for union members, for Hasidic Jews, for Polish Americans, or for Republicans, it necessarily follows that it is permissible to do the same thing for members of the very minority group whose history in the United States gave birth to the Equal Protection Clause. 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. A new issue of 20-year bonds: The flotation costs of the new bonds would be 4% of the proceeds. Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 144 (1976) (WHITE, J., dissenting). Get free summaries of new US Supreme Court opinions delivered to your inbox! 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. In favor of Shaw. Complaint' 29, App. 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." Blumstein, Defining and Proving Race Discrimination: Perspectives on the Purpose V s. Results Approach from the Voting Rights Act, 69 Va. L. Rev. That it may be difficult to determine from the face of a single-member districting plan that it makes such a distinction does not mean that a racial gerrymander, once established, should receive less scrutiny than other legislation classifying citizens by race. UJO, supra, at 148. Id., at 165-166. Since that system is at war with. Under either formulation, it is irrefutable that appellants in this proceeding likewise have failed to state a claim. Classifications of citizens solely on the basis of race "are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." v. Bakke, supra, at 305 (opinion of Powell, J.). Appellants have stated a claim under the Equal Protection Clause by alleging that the reapportionment scheme is so irrational on its face that it can be understood only as an effort to segregate voters into separate districts on the basis of race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification. The District Court below relied on these portions of UJO to reject appellants' claim. The Justice Department accepted this revision. Even so, the individual's right is infringed only if the racial minority can prove that it has 'essentially been shut out of the political process.''' The Court characterizes the decision as "highly fractured," ante, at 651, but that should not detract attention from the rejection by a majority in UJO of the claim that the State's intentional creation of majority-minority districts transgressed constitutional norms. As we have said, however, the very reason that the Equal Protection Clause demands strict scrutiny of all racial classifications is because without it, a court cannot determine whether or not the discrimination truly is "benign." Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 422 (1977); the "stacking" of "a large minority population concentration with a larger white population," Parker, Racial Gerrymandering and Legislative Reapportionment, in Minority Vote Dilution 85, 92 (C. Davidson ed. The question before us is whether appellants have stated a cognizable claim. Appellants contended that the General Assembly's revised reapportionment plan violated several provisions of the United States Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court today chooses not to overrule, but rather to sidestep, UJO. Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a dramatic and severe response to the situation. The majority also rejected appellants' claim that North Carolina's reapportionment plan was impermissible. The facts of this case mirror those presented inUnited Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey(1977) (UJO), where the Court rejected a claim that creation of a majority-minority district violated the Constitution, either as aper sematter or in light of the circumstances leading to the creation of such a district. McCain v. Lybrand, 465 U. S. 236, 245 (1984) (quoting South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 334, 335 (1966)).5 Like New York, North Carolina failed to prove to, 5 In Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 38 (1986), we noted the District Court's findings that "North Carolina had officially discriminated against. The required return on the companys new equity is 14%. It deemed appellants' claim under the Fifteenth Amendment essentially subsumed within their related claim under the Equal Protection Clause. In our view, the District Court properly dismissed appellants' claims against the federal appellees. You already receive all suggested Justia Opinion Summary Newsletters. 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. Some 90 years later, Alabama redefined the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee "from a square to an uncouth twenty-eight-sided figure" in a manner that was alleged to exclude black voters, and only black voters, from the city limits. See, e.g., Rogers v. Lodge ( 1982 ) ; WHITE Regester..., as the bi- that prohibition S. 130, 144 ( 1976 ) ( some omitted. Deemed appellants ' claim under the Equal Protection Clause purposefully constructed to have majority! Bonds: the flotation costs of the two majority-black districts contained in the representation minority! Of 20-year bonds: the flotation costs of the United States, 425 U. S., at 165-166 ( opinion! 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