THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 5, 1995 TAG: 9512050268
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
A North Carolina case crucial to the survival of redistricting measures nationwide that favor minority voters goes before the U.S. Supreme Court today.
The high court's decision in Shaw vs. Hunt could help set standards for future compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The act aims to end practices that dilute the voting strength of minorities.
At stake are the seats of 12th District Rep. Mel Watt and 1st District Rep. Eva Clayton, both Democrats, as well as the posts of 17 other congressmen from districts around the country that were drawn during the congressional redistricting that followed the 1990 census.
``Without these districts, you're not going to have minority representation in Congress; it's just that simple,'' said Watt, one of the first two black congressmen from North Carolina since the turn of the century.
``If that's what the Supreme Court wants, and that's what the majority of the citizenry wants, I guess we'll have to see what comes next after that,'' he said.
Julius Chambers, a famed civil-rights lawyer and chancellor of North Carolina Central University, will argue on behalf of voters who support the state's position to keep North Carolina's 12th District as it is.
Chambers won a pivotal 1986 voting-rights case that overturned several multimember legislative districts in North Carolina that had prevented black voters from electing their preferred candidates.
Robinson O. Everett, one of five white Durham County voters who filed the Shaw vs. Hunt lawsuit, believes the districts amount to racial gerrymandering and are not needed.
``There are new currents in politics, and there is some white-crossover voting. There is no legitimate reason to have these race-based districts,'' Everett said.
He hopes the court will strike down the districts in time for the 1996 elections.
``I think after four years, that's long enough,'' he said. ``We view it as a constitutional crime.''
The filing period for the 1996 elections will end Feb. 5 and the primary will be May 7, but the Supreme Court can take until summer to issue its decision.
The court also will hear a redistricting case from Texas involving three districts that, like North Carolina's 1st District, resemble splatters.
But while each of the Texas districts lies within a single county, Watt's district stretches 167 miles through fragments of 10 counties.
Brenda J. Wright, head of the voting-rights project for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, believes the court took both cases to settle the question of what the Voting Rights Act requires.
``You could infer from that that they want to make some definitive statement here and have cast a fairly broad net to be in a position to do that,'' she said.
The court in three earlier redistricting rulings, including one in the North Carolina case, has established that race cannot be the predominant factor in drawing districts unless the state has a compelling interest and draws the district in a fashion ``narrowly tailored'' to meet that interest.
Edwin M. Speas Jr., North Carolina's senior deputy attorney general, and Chambers will maintain that the Voting Rights Act required the state to draw two districts because the black vote is swamped by the white vote and because the state has a past of official discrimination and racial campaign appeals.
State officials also maintain that the much-ridiculed shape of the 12th District stems from efforts to link urban areas and protect incumbents in other districts.
Wright sees the redistricting cases as examples of a phenomenon that is also reflected in the popular view of affirmative action.
``Redistricting really presents us with just one of a number of examples where I think that the goals that Americans say they are committed to as a matter of principle come into conflict with what they are willing to do in practice,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Eva Clayton
Mel Watt
KEYWORDS: REDISTRICTING by CNB