Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 29, 1993                   TAG: 9306290156
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From staff and wire reports
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BUT VIRGINIA DISTRICTS EXPECTED TO SHAPE UP OK WITH COURT

The justices ruled that a North Carolina congressional district resembling a 160-mile string bean, designed to increase black representation, may have violated some white voters' right to equal treatment.

The ruling applies not only to congressional districts, but to electoral lines drawn for state legislators, county supervisors, school board members and any officials elected to state and local government bodies.

It is not clear whether the court seeks to attack all racial line-drawing or only "bizarre" looking districts, like some that resemble a snake or an inkblot.

"The case in North Carolina is much more extreme than any district in Virginia, state or federal," said Rep. Robert Scott, D-Newport News. His Richmond-to-Norfolk district was drawn with the idea of giving blacks a chance to elect a black congressman. He is the first black since Reconstruction to represent Virginia in Washington.

Scott said the high court's decision means challenges to black-majority districts can be heard, not that the opponents will prevail.

"The district court could easily conclude that although the district looked bizarre, there were rational reasons for it and sustain the redistricting," Scott said.

"Even the North Carolina plan may be upheld on remand," agreed University of Virginia constitutional expert A.E. "Dick" Howard. "I think the Virginia plan would be upheld easier. The configuration [of Scott's district] is simply not so bizarre."

State Sen. Joseph Gartlan, chairman of the Senate committee that helped draw the boundaries, said the Supreme Court ruling shouldn't offer any new threat to Scott's district or any black-majority districts "because the possibility of litigating the validity of these districts has always been present."

Gartlan added that the Scott district "wasn't bizarre at all. It was a piece of artwork."

Elsewhere, civil rights advocates condemned the ruling.

"It sounds very damaging for minority voting rights," said Frank Parker, director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The decision "has the potential for jeopardizing all 26 majority-black and majority-Hispanic congressional districts, and hundreds of state legislative districts that were created after the 1990 census," Parker said.

But O'Connor's opinion "fails to provide guidance, so we can't tell what the scope of the decision may be," he added. "There are so many different kinds and shapes of districts that it's difficult to tell what is vulnerable and what is not."

The court majority refused to say whether deliberately drawing a minority-dominated district is always open to constitutional challenge. Dissenting Justice David Souter speculated that the impact of the decision may be narrow because few districts are as bizarre as North Carolina's District 12.