ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above RICHMOND
NEXT MONTH, the state's only black-majority congressional district goes to court. - Thursday's Supreme Court decision striking down minority voting districts in North Carolina and Texas could have a major impact on the way Virginia elects its congressional representatives.
Next month, a panel of three federal judges in Roanoke is scheduled to hear arguments that Virginia's 3rd Congressional District - a 225-mile strip winding through portions of Portsmouth and Norfolk all the way up to Essex County with tentacles stretching into parts of Richmond and Petersburg - was unconstitutionally designed to maximize the voting power of blacks.
Sixty-two percent of the voting-age population in the district is black. Since its inception in 1992, it has been represented by Robert "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, the first black to be elected this century to represent Virginia in Congress.
The suit was filed late last year by two Republican activists - Don Moon of Hampton and Robert Smith of Norfolk - who claim the district was "racially gerrymandered" and unfairly split the populations in 16 municipalities to maximize the black vote.
"These decisions are two more nails in the coffin of racial gerrymanders," said Stephen Katsurinis, a Richmond lawyer representing Moon and Smith. "What happened in North Carolina and Texas is the same thing that happened in Virginia."
For years, many state legislatures - which draw congressional district lines - interpreted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as essentially saying that minority districts must be created whenever possible.
Thursday's ruling reaffirms last year's high court decision that race should not be the "predominant" reason in drawing boundaries. The court said other factors - such as maintaining compactness and keeping communities intact - also are important.
A spokesman for Attorney General Jim Gilmore, who is defending the case for the state, declined to comment Thursday, saying the office needed more time to review the ruling.
But Kent Willis, state director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which also is defending the case, said the ruling may not affect Virginia.
Willis said politics and incumbency protection played a more important role than race when the General Assembly created the 3rd District.
In papers filed last month in U.S. District Court, Deputy Attorney General Frank Ferguson said that the Democratic-controlled legislature's first priorities in 1991 were creating a new district in Northern Virginia, protecting its own officeholders and pitting incumbent Republican congressmen against each other.
Holding the other view is Edward Blum of the Texas-based Campaign for a Colorblind America. "It looks to me like the defendant in Virginia has a totally hopeless chance of prevailing," said Blum, whose group has been the impetus and a financial backer for some of the legal work against minority districts. He'll sit at the plaintiff's table as an adviser when the Virginia case is heard.
Thursday's ruling, Blum said, "could relate to every representative district in the country, whether it's a citywide election district or a countywide district or a statewide district. Most districts as they are drawn today will not be affected by the ruling because most districts aren't as bizarrely drawn as Virginia's 3rd Congressional District.
"The court is moving toward the day when race and ethnicity and religion do not play a role in our public policy and our public life. The decision settles a great conflict of vision - Americans truly must use their brain and not their skin when they elect the men and women who will represent them."
While Blum reveled in the decision, the ACLU's Willis took solace in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that special cases could arise where it is legal to draw a district predominantly on race.
"We feel that would be a strong issue is Virginia," Willis said. He said Virginia has a long history of racially polarized voting patterns and that the three largest cities in the district - Norfolk, Richmond and Newport News - were all ordered to form ward systems to help blacks get elected to city councils.
But Katsurinis says voting is no longer racially polarized in Virginia, noting that in 1989 Douglas Wilder became the nation's first elected black governor.
Scott could not be reached for comment.
The principles espoused in any ruling about minority districts could ultimately be applied to local and statehouse districts across the country.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Scott. Graphic: Map. color.by CNB