Case Summary

In August 1992, a group of Louisiana voters, all residents of Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District, filed a state lawsuit challenging the 4th Congressional District in Louisiana’s 1991 congressional redistricting plan as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

  • The defendants removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. After trial, the federal district court struck down the plan as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and ordered a court-drawn map be implemented. Defendants appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a district of which they weren’t residents.
  • On June 29, 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case back to the district court with instructions to dismiss for lack of Article III standing. The Court explained the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the 4th District since they all resided in the 5th District and therefore could not demonstrate that they suffered the personalized injury that comes from racial classification.

Significance: In order to have standing to bring a racial gerrymandering claim, a plaintiff must be a resident of the district being challenged.

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U.S. Supreme Court - 515 U.S. 737 (1995)