Case Summary

In the early 1990s, a group of Georgia voters filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s congressional redistricting plan as a racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause under Shaw v. Reno. Plaintiffs alleged the plan was drawn predominantly using race citing the State’s connection of Black neighborhoods 260 miles away from one another to obtain preclearance under § 5 of the Voting Rights act from the DOJ which, at the time, required states to “maximize” the number of majority-minority districts in plans.

  • The federal district court struck down the plan as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Defendants appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that evidence of race predominating was not sufficient alone for a racial gerrymandering claim; plaintiffs were also required to show a district’s shape is “so bizarre that it is unexplainable other than on the basis of race.”
  • On June 29, 1995, SCOTUS affirmed and held the plan was an unconstitutional gerrymander, clarifying that once race has been shown to be the predominant factor driving the line-drawing process, strict scrutiny applies, and the State must then show their use of race was justified by a sufficiently compelling governmental interest. The Court went on to say that even if compliance with the VRA could serve as a sufficiently compelling interest for strict scrutiny, it would not be sufficient in this case because the DOJ’s “maximization” policy went beyond what the VRA required. § 5 was intended to prevent changes in voting procedures that would lead to “retrogression” in minority voters’ ability to effectively exercise their right to vote, not to require States to engage in presumptively unconstitutional race-based redistricting.

Significance: A redistricting plan must be analyzed under the "strict scrutiny" level of judicial review whenever race is shown to be the overriding, predominant consideration in the line drawing process.

Case Library

U.S. Supreme Court - 515 U.S. 900 (1995)