Case Summary

On October 24, 2013, a group of North Carolina voters filed a federal lawsuit challenging Districts 1 and 12 in North Carolina’s newly enacted congressional redistricting plan as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Prior to the 2011 redistricting cycle, North Carolina’s 1st and 12th congressional districts each consistently elected Black voters’ preferred candidates despite neither containing a majority Black voting-age population (“BVAP”). When North Carolina redrew its congressional plan in 2011, District 1 needed ~100,000 more people to satisfy equal population requirements so areas with large populations of Black voters were added, changing District 1’s BVAP from 48.6% to 52.7% and the new configuration resulting in District 12’s BVAP changing from 43.8% to 50.7%, which plaintiffs alleged constituted racial gerrymandering.

  • On February 5, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina struck down the challenged districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Defendants filed their notice of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court three days later, claiming the State’s race-based line drawing decisions were justified in order to avoid vote dilution under § 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act.
  • On May 22, 2017, SCOTUS affirmed the district court’s decision that the challenged districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. While noting that compliance with the VRA can serve as a compelling interest to justify race-based redistricting decisions, a state must sufficiently demonstrate it had good reasons to believe such actions were necessary to comply with the VRA. Here, the Court found the State failed to conduct any such inquiry into whether drawing those districts without regard to race would’ve resulted in a VRA violation. In rejecting one of the State’s alternative arguments, the Court explained that when both race and politics are competing explanations for a district’s boundaries, plaintiffs are not required to introduce an alternative map to show a state’s redistricting objectives could’ve been achieved while also improving racial balance; such evidence can be crucial, but it isn’t the only means to refute a State’s defense that politics, not race, drove their decisions.

Significance: In order to invoke compliance with the Voting Rights Act as the justification for their predominant use of race when drawing district lines, the State must show that they had good cause to believe that violations of the Voting Rights Act would have resulted if race was not the predominant consideration.

Case Library

U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina - 1:13-cv-00949

U.S. Supreme Court - No. 15-1262 [137 S.Ct. 1455 (2017)]