Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 29, 1993 TAG: 9306290167
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The decision casts doubt on the redistricting that brought North Carolina its first black members of Congress since Reconstruction, and possibly on districts given bizarre shapes to ensure the election of minority representatives.
The 5-4 ruling gave a group of white voters the chance to prove the state's 12th District, which connects small black population centers in a 160-mile ribbon no wider in some places than the interstate highway it follows, is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion left it up to a federal judge in North Carolina to decide whether the district actually is unconstitutional, but made it difficult for the state to prove it is not.
The decision overturned a ruling last year by a three-judge U.S. District Court. The lower court had ruled that Supreme Court precedents made it clear white voters generally have no cause for complaint about districts drawn for the purpose of electing blacks.
O'Connor saw another lesson:
"It is unsettling how closely the North Carolina plan resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past," which were struck down because they excluded blacks, she said. A reapportionment plan linking people who "may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin," O'Connor said, "bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid."
Joining in the majority opinion were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and David Souter dissented.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB