post, at 684-685 (dissenting opinion). 442 U. S., at 272. They did not even claim to be white. Ante, at 653. 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. But even recast as a Fourteenth Amendment case, Gomillion does not assist the majority, for its focus was on the alleged effect of the city's action, which was to exclude black voters from the municipality of Tuskegee. Pp. 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. 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." Tr. O. Gade & H. Stillwell, North Carolina: People and Environments 65-68 (1986). This Court has held political gerrymanders to be justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause. 364 U. S., at 341. They did not even claim to be white. cases of electoral districting and one for most other types of state governmental decisions. 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. 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. Before us, the state appellees contend that the General Assembly's revised plan was necessary not to prevent retrogression, but to avoid dilution of black voting strength in violation of 2, as construed in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Pp. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483; McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184. -using race in redistricting is as important of it being continuous. Where members of a racial minority group vote as a cohesive unit, practices such as multimember or atlarge electoral systems can reduce or nullify minority voters' ability, as a group, "to elect the candidate of their choice." Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 495 (1954). Constitution prohibits using race as the basis for how to draw districts, 1. I fail to see how a decision based on a failure to establish discriminatory intent can support the inference that it is unnecessary to prove discriminatory effect. Instead, the General Assembly enacted a revised redistricting plan, 1991 N. C. Extra Sess. Shaw v. Hunt, 861 F. Supp. The Twelfth District received even harsher criticism. 14, 27-29. Our focus is on appellants' claim that the State engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The state appellees alternatively argue that the General Assembly's plan advanced a compelling interest entirely distinct from the Voting Rights Act. Ante, at 646 (emphasis in original). I add these comments to emphasize that the two critical facts in this case are undisputed: First, the shape of District 12 is so bizarre that it must have been drawn for the purpose of either advantaging or disadvantaging a cognizable group of voters; and, second, regardless of that shape, it was drawn for the purpose of facilitating the election of a second black representative from North Carolina. -dividing voters into districts bc of race is segregation. North Carolina's decision to create a majority-minority district can be explained as an attempt to meet this objection. That argument strikes a powerful historical chord: It is unsettling how closely the North Carolina plan resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past. Although the State argues that it had a strong basis for concluding that remedial action was warranted, only three Justices in UJO were prepared to say that States have a significant interest in minimizing the consequences of racial bloc voting apart from the Act's requirements and without regard for sound districting principles. As a result of the 1990 census, North Carolina became entitled to a 12th seat in the United States House of Representatives. electoral process. Gomillion, in which a tortured municipal boundary line was drawn to exclude black voters, was such a case. 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. The required return on the companys new equity is 14%. Indeed, racial classifications receive close scrutiny even when they may be said to burden or benefit the races equally. To comply with 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965-which prohibits a covered jurisdiction from implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or . ", ity voters-surely they cannot complain of discriminatory treatment.6. Respondent Argument (Reno) 1. Appellants allege that the revised plan, which contains district boundary lines of dramatically irregular shape, consti-. Drawing on the "one person, one vote" principle, this Court recognized that "[t]he right to vote can be affected by adilutionof voting power as well as by an absolute prohibition on casting a ballot." Congress, too, responded to the problem of vote dilution. 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. To locate the subject, use the verb preceded by Who? See Tr. An attorney on behalf of North Carolina argued that the general assembly had created the second district in an attempt to better comply with requests from the Attorney General in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. As the majority recognizes, "redistricting differs from other kinds of state decisionmaking in that the legislature always is aware of race when it draws district lines, just as it is aware of age, economic status, religious and political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors." Might the consumer be better off with $2,000\$2,000$2,000 in income? See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S., at 157-158; Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S., at 40. Accordingly, the Court held that such schemes violate the Fourteenth Amendment when they are adopted with a discriminatory purpose and have the effect of diluting minority voting strength. Ibid. Pope v. Blue, 809 F. Supp. See, e. g., Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 341 (1960) (voters alleged to have been excluded from voting in the municipality). Bolling, The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently from other districting claims.9 The only justification I. In whatever district, the individual voter has a right to vote in each election, and the election will result in the voter's representation. Oral Argument - April 20, 1993; Opinions. Redistricters have to justify themselves. In other words, North Carolina was found by Congress to have" 'resorted to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees'" and therefore "would be likely to engage in 'similar maneuvers in the future in order to evade the remedies for voting discrimination contained in the Act itself.'" If the allegation of racial gerrymandering remains uncontradicted, the District Court further must determine whether the North Carolina plan is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. 2. Journalize the entry to record the identification of the customers bad debt. As we explained in Feeney: "A racial classification, regardless of purported motivation, is presumptively invalid and can be upheld only. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. 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. I doubt that this constitutes a discriminatory purpose as defined in the Court's equal protection cases-i. The State's revised plan contained a second majority-black district in the north-central region. For example, on remand North Carolina might claim that it adopted the revised plan in order to comply with the 5 "nonretrogression" principle. Shaw V. Reno Civil Liberties vs Civil Rights 17th Amendment 2nd Amendment 3rd Amendment 4th Amendment Bostock v Clayton County District of Columbia v. Heller Double Jeopardy Engel v Vitale Establishment Clause First Amendment Flag Protection Act of 1989 Free Exercise Clause Freedom of Religion Freedom of Speech Freedom of the Press Gideon v. depends on these twin elements. Post, at 678 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). They also point out that in 1990 a black candidate defeated a white opponent in the Democratic Party runoff for a United States Senate seat before being defeated narrowly by the Republican incumbent in the general election. North Carolina's failure to respect these principles, in Judge Voorhees' view, "augur[ed] a constitutionally suspect, and potentially unlawful, intent" sufficient to defeat the state appellees' motion to dismiss. See, e. g., Wygant v. Jackson Ed. tutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Location North Carolina General Assembly. Seeing no good reason to engage in either, I dissent. the community, they violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection"); Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S., at 178-183, and nn. or What? Id., at 154, n. 14 (quoting Brief for Petitioners, O. T. 1976, No. After the 1990 census, the North Carolina General Assembly redrew its congressional districts to account for changes in population. Id., at 133 (emphasis added). the group claimed that the districts were racial gerrymanders that violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 392, 397 (WDNC 1992). The majority first took judicial notice of a fact omitted from appellants' complaint: that appellants are white. 3. 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. Nonetheless, the notion that North Carolina's plan, under which whites remain a voting majority in a disproportionate number of congressional districts, and pursuant to which the State has sent its first black representatives since Reconstruction to the United States Congress, might have violated appellants' constitutional rights is both a fiction and a departure from settled equal protection principles. I dissent. O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined. wide, the majority concluded that appellants had failed to state an equal protection claim. There are three financing options: 1. 430 U. S., at 165. The shape of the district at issue in this case is indeed so bizarre that few other examples are ever likely to carry the unequivocal implication of impermissible use of race that the Court finds here. Because appellants here stated such a claim, the District Court erred in dismissing their complaint. 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. Until today, the Court has analyzed equal protection claims involving race in electoral districting differently from equal protection claims involving other forms of governmental conduct, and before turning to the different regimes of analysis it will be useful to set out the relevant respects in which such districting differs from the characteristic circumstances in which a State might otherwise consciously consider race. -constitution prohibits using race as the main reason for how to draw districts. Yet, under the State's plan, they still constitute a voting majority in 10 (or 83%) of the 12 congressional districts. Further, it goes beyond the province of the Court to decide this case. Wygant v. Jackson Bd. It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our state legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny. for a remand at all, even accepting the majority's basic approach to this case. Thus, if appellants' allegations of a racial gerrymander are not contradicted on remand, the District Court must determine whether the General Assembly's reapportionment plan satisfies strict scrutiny. The majority attempts to distinguish UJO by imagining a heretofore unknown type of constitutional claim. Justice Stevens wrote a separate dissent. It does so by glossing over the striking similarities, focusing on surface differences, most notably the (admittedly unusual) shape of the newly created districtand imagining an entirely new cause of action. The district lines may be drawn, for example, to provide for compact districts of contiguous territory, or to maintain the integrity of political subdivisions. By perpetuating such notions, a racial gerrymander may exacerbate the very patterns of racial bloc voting that majority-minority districting is sometimes said to counteract. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 758 (1983) (STEVENS, J., concurring). by Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Scott A. Sinder, Kevin X. Crowley, and James A. Peters. The consideration of race in "segregation" cases is no different than in other race-conscious districting; from the standpoint of the affected groups, moreover, the line-drawings all act in similar fashion.8 A plan that "segregates" being functionally indistinguishable from any of the other varieties of gerrymandering, we should be consistent in what we require from a claimant: proof of discriminatory purpose and effect. 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." Nor was it ever in doubt that "the State deliberately used race in a purposeful manner." The central explanation has to do with the nature of the redistricting process. An understanding of the nature of appellants' claim is critical to our resolution of the case. 92-357 . facilitating the election of a member of an identifiable group of voters? See post, at 684 (dissenting opinion). But while district irregularities may provide strong indicia of a potential gerrymander, they do no more than that. 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 trade-offs are involved in deciding to have a single large, centrally located facility instead of Cf. Rather than challenge this conclusion, North Carolina chose to draw the second district. 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. the latter two of these three conditions depend on proving that what the Court today brands as "impermissible racial stereotypes," ante, at 647, are true. We previously have recognized a significant state interest in eradicating the effects of past racial discrimination. 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). But numerous North Carolinians did. Nor if dilution is proven is there any need for further constitutional scrutiny; there has never been a suggestion that such use of race could be justified under any type of scrutiny, since the dilution of the right to vote can not be said to serve any legitimate governmental purpose. 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. To be sure, as the Court says, it would be logically possible to apply strict scrutiny to these cases (and to uphold those uses of race that are permissible), see ante, at 653-657. of Oral Arg. A state must prove a compelling interest in order to survive a legal challenge to the redistricting plan. See Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448,524-525, n. 3 (1980) (Stewart, J., dissenting) ("No person in [UJOJ was deprived of his electoral franchise"); Regents of Univ. See ante, at 652 (acknowledging that "UJO set forth a standard under which white voters can establish unconstitutional vote dilution"). We also do not decide. Whites constitute roughly 76% of the total population and 79% of the voting age population in North Carolina. UJO, supra, at 148. 808 F. 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. u. S. 735, 753 (1973); see also Mobile v. Bolden, supra, at 86-87 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). 92-357. Every Member of the Court assumed that the plaintiffs' allegation that the statute "segregate[d] eligible voters by race and place of origin" stated a constitutional claim. several smaller, dispersed facilities? Naomi buys $1,000 worth of American Express travelers checks and charges The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently from other districting claims. J.). Yes; the Court agreed that the shape of the proposed district was so odd that there was no compelling explanation for its shape other than separating voters by race. District 1 has been compared to a "Rorschach ink-blot test," Shaw v. Barr, 808 F. Supp. U. S. If not, it does not. Under that principle, a proposed voting change cannot be precleared if it will lead to "a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise." Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 808 F. Croson, supra, at 500 (quoting Wygant, supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)). The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870 after a bloody Civil War, promised unequivocally that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote" no longer would be "denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Even Justice Whit-. But it soon became apparent that guaranteeing equal access to the polls would not suffice to root out other racially discriminatory voting practices. of Ed. Rather, the issue is whether the classification based on race discriminates. JUSTICE SOUTER apparently believes that racial gerrymandering is harmless unless it dilutes a racial group's voting strength. The only justification I can imagine would be the preservation of "sound districting principles," such as compactness and contiguity. By a 2-to-1 vote, the District Court also dismissed the complaint against the state appellees. We also do not decide whether appellants' complaint stated a claim under constitutional provisions other than the Fourteenth Amendment. The dissenters thought the unusual. North Carolina's initial reapportionment effort included one district purposefully constructed to have a majority of black voters. With these considerations in mind, we have limited such claims by insisting upon a showing that "the political processes were not equally open to participation by the group in question-that its members had less opportunity than did other residents in the district to participate in the political processes and to elect legislators of their choice." SHAW ET AL. As for this latter category, we. Part of the explanation for the majority's approach has to do, perhaps, with the emotions stirred by words such as "segregation" and "political apartheid." Significant changes in the area of redistricting and gerrymandering, 1. Const., Arndt. In Wright, for example, the facts might have supported the contention that the districts were intended to, and did in fact, shield the 17th District from any minority influence and "pack" black and Puerto Rican voters in the 18th, thereby invidiously minimizing their voting strength. 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. Of the 10 counties through which District 12 passes, 5 are cut into 3 different districts; even towns are divided. But nothing in our case law compels the conclusion that racial and political gerrymanders are subject to precisely the same constitutional scrutiny. 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