U.S. Supreme Court Affirms North Carolina Districts Rely Too Much on Race.
(I hope this clarifies what the Supremes have done.)
'For the third time in recent weeks, the Supreme Court on Monday took action on a voting rights dispute in North Carolina, affirming a decision striking down many General Assembly districts in the state for relying too heavily on race.
The court’s summary order gave no reasons, but the question in the case was similar to one the justices addressed last month. In that case, the court struck down two of the state’s congressional districts as racial gerrymanders.
The new cases presented the same basic question in the context of the state’s General Assembly.
Last August, a three-judge Federal District Court unanimously struck down 28 state House and Senate districts drawn by the Republican-led Legislature in 2011, saying the districts violated equal protection principles by using race as the predominant factor without good reason. The court rejected the state’s argument that the districts were justified as an attempt to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
The court said it made “no finding that the General Assembly acted in bad faith or with discriminatory intent in drawing the challenged districts,” and it noted that they had been approved by the Justice Department under a part of the Voting Rights Act later effectively struck down by the Supreme Court. “Nor do we consider whether the challenged districts involved any impermissible ‘packing’ of minority voters,” the court added.
Nonetheless, the trial court said, lawmakers had violated the Equal Protection Clause by focusing too heavily on race in drawing the contested districts. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling in North Carolina v. Covington, No. 16-649.
The justices also took action in a separate appeal in the case, North Carolina v. Covington, No. 10-1023. In late November, after the election, the trial court ordered special elections in 2017, about halfway through what would ordinarily be two-year terms for state legislators. It set a March 15 deadline for state lawmakers to draw new maps.
But the United States Supreme Court intervened in January, blocking the November decision. The justices did not explain the move, and their order said that the temporary stay of the lower court’s decision would last only as long as it took the justices to consider an appeal from state officials.
On Monday, in an unsigned opinion without noted dissents, the Supreme Court said the trial court had acted too hastily and ordered it to reconsider the matter of whether a special election was warranted.
“Although this court has never addressed whether or when a special election may be a proper remedy for a racial gerrymander, obvious considerations include the severity and nature of the particular constitutional violation, the extent of the likely disruption to the ordinary processes of governance if early elections are imposed, and the need to act with proper judicial restraint when intruding on state sovereignty,” the opinion said.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/us/politics/us-supreme-court-affirms-north-carolina-districts-rely-too-much-on-race.html?
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