509 U.S. 630 (1993), argued 20 Apr. 1993, decided 28 June 1993 by vote of 5 to 4; O’Connor for the Court, White, Blackmun, Stevens, and Souter in dissent. Before 1991 the state of North Carolina had never elected a black to sit in the United States Congress. That history ended, however, when Representatives Eva Clayton and Mel Watt, both Democrats, took their seats in Congress following the 1992 election. The new districts from which these two members of Congress came were drawn after the 1990 census to meet federal standards designed to increase the chances of minority candidates. Moreover, the changes wrought by the reapportionment of districts under the guidelines of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its 1982 amendments doubled the number of black- and Hispanic-majority districts throughout the country, from twenty-six to fifty-two. Of these news districts, however, none had an odder history and a stranger shape than the twelfth, which Representative Watt served. Except for a few bulges and detours, the Twelfth Congressional District of North Carolina ran along Interstate 85 for about 160 miles, from Durham to Gastonia, and in some instances the district was no wider than the interstate highway that it followed. Initially, North Carolina had tailored only the Twelfth District to comply with Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but the Department of Justice rejected the proposal and North Carolina responded by creating a second district, although not in the region that the department had recommended. According to the Department of Justice, that second district and the entire effort to realign voting boundaries for federal elections was necessary because the 22 percent African-American population was not sufficiently represented. The Department of Justice, therefore, gave its blessing not only to the two districts but to the oddly shaped (indeed, even its creators called it “ugly”) district. Ruth Shaw, a white Democrat and resident of the Twelfth District, brought suit against the United States government, represented by Attorney General Janet Reno, and the state of North Carolina. Robinson O. Everett, a Duke University law professor and himself one of the five plaintiffs in the case, argued it before both a special three-judge district court panel and the Supreme Court. In the case of the former, the judges dismissed the complaint, citing United Jewish Organizations of Williams-burgh v. Carey (1977), which held that a state could redistrict along racial lines to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Court also said that such race distinctions had a good purpose and therefore were permissible under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Shaw and her fellow plaintiffs, however, pressed their claim before the Supreme Court, a court already deeply divided over the constitutionality of affirmative action. According to Shaw and the other plaintiffs, the Department of Justice and North Carolina's legislature had purposefully engaged in race-conscious drawing of district lines. Such “racial redistricting” both discriminated against whites and was an implicit affront to blacks because it implied that they were incapable of organizing coalitions to elect favored candidates of whatever race. In essence, the redistricting plan was a form of reverse discrimination that threatened to balkanize North Carolina into competing racial factions and entrench racial bloc voting. Such actions amounted to the kind of conduct that had led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in the first place and that had characterized the history of discrimination against black would-be voters in the South during the first half of the twentieth century. The plaintiffs asserted that only by doing what the Voting Rights Act demanded—exercising “color-blind” redistricting—would North Carolina and other states take proper account of all constituencies, such as farmers and political partisans, that would otherwise be barred from effective representation by the effort to draw districts exclusively along racial lines. The Democratic plaintiffs were haunted by another political reality, however. By consolidating the black vote, which had historically been Democratic, the Republican party was better able to make inroads in white districts. [...]
In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the use of racial gerrymandering in North Carolina's reapportionment plan. The Court found that race could not be the deciding factor when drawing districts.
North Carolina’s 1990 census entitled the state to a 12th seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The general assembly drafted a re-apportionment plan that created one Black-majority district. At the time, North Carolina’s voting-age population was 78% White, 20% Black, 1% Indigenous, and 1% Asian. The general assembly submitted the plan to the U.S. Attorney General for preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. Congress had amended the VRA in 1982 to target "vote dilution" in which members of a specific racial minority were spread thin across a district to decrease their ability to ever gain a voting majority. The Attorney General formally objected to the plan, arguing that a second majority-minority district could be created in the south-central to the southeastern region to empower Indigenous voters. The general assembly took another look at the maps and drew in a second majority-minority district in the north-central region of the state, along Interstate 85. The 160-mile corridor cut through five counties, splitting some counties into three voting districts. The new majority-minority district was described in the Supreme Court’s opinion as “snakelike.” Residents objected to the re-apportionment plan, and five White residents from Durham County, North Carolina, led by Ruth O. Shaw, filed suit against the state and the federal government. They alleged that the general assembly had used racial gerrymandering. Gerrymandering occurs when one group or political party draws voting district boundaries in a way that gives a specific group of voters more power. Shaw sued on the basis that the plan violated several constitutional principles, including the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal protection under law for all citizens, regardless of race. A district court dismissed the claims against the federal government and the state. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the claim against the state. Residents argued that the state had gone too far when redrawing district lines to create a second majority-minority district. The resulting district was strangely structured and did not follow reapportionment guidelines which highlighted the importance of “compactness, contiguousness, geographical boundaries, or political subdivisions." According to the residents' complaint, racial gerrymandering prevented voters from participating in a “color-blind” voting process. 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. The VRA required an increase in the representation of minority groups. 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. The second majority-minority district served an important purpose in North Carolina’s overall re-apportionment plan. Did North Carolina violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment when it established a second majority-minority district through racial gerrymandering, in response to a request from the attorney general? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the 5-4 decision. Legislation that classifies a person or group of people solely based on their race is, by its nature, a threat to a system that strives to achieve equality, the majority opined. Justice O’Connor noted that there are some rare circumstances where a law can appear racially neutral, but cannot be explained through anything but race; North Carolina’s reapportionment plan fell into this category. The majority found that North Carolina’s twelfth district was “so extremely irregular” that its creation suggested some sort of racial bias. Therefore, the state’s redesigned districts deserve the same level of scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment as a law that has explicit racial motivations. Justice O'Connor applied strict scrutiny which asks the court to determine whether a race-based classification is narrowly tailored, has a compelling government interest and offers the "least restrictive" means of achieving that governmental interest. Justice O'Connor, on behalf of the majority, found that redistricting plans could take race into account in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but race could not be the sole or predominant factor when drawing a district. In reference to re-apportionment plans that focus on race as a determining factor, Justice O’Connor wrote: “It reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole.” In his dissent, Justice White argued that the Court had ignored the importance of showing "cognizable harm," also known as proof that any sort of "harm" had even occurred. In order for White voters in North Carolina to even file suit against the state and federal government, they had to have been harmed. The White North Carolina voters could not show that they were disenfranchised as a result of the second, oddly shaped majority-minority district, Justice White wrote. Their individual voting rights had not been impacted. He argued that drawing districts based on race in order to increase minority representation could serve an important government interest. Dissents from Justices Blackmun and Stevens echoed Justice White. The Equal Protection Clause should only be used to protect those who have been discriminated against in the past, they wrote. White voters could not fall into that category. By ruling in this manner, the Court actively overturned a past ruling on the applicability of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Souter noted that the Court seemed to be suddenly applying strict scrutiny to a law that aimed to increase representation amongst a historically discriminated group. Under Shaw v. Reno, redistricting can be held to the same legal standard as laws that explicitly classify by race. Legislative districts that cannot be explained through any means other than race may be struck down in court. The Supreme Court continues to hear cases about gerrymandering and racially motivated districts. Only two years after Shaw v. Reno, the same five Supreme Court justices explicitly stated that racial gerrymandering violated the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause in Miller v. Johnson.
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