DATE: Thursday, June 26, 1997               TAG: 9706260393

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A16  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   43 lines

HIGH COURT RULING BUOYS 3RD DISTRICT SUPPORTERS

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that race was not the chief factor that Florida used to draw a new state Senate district encouraged defenders of Virginia's only black-majority congressional district.

The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel's ruling that Virginia's serpentine 3rd District was the result of unlawful racial gerrymandering.

In a 5-4 ruling Wednesday, the court said Florida's creation of a district whose voting-age population was 41 percent black is proper.

``The evidence amply supports the trial court's views that race did not predominate over Florida's traditional districting principles'' in drawing the district, Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court.

Just six days earlier, the justices had upheld a Georgia redistricting plan that included only one black-majority congressional district instead of the three that civil rights activists had wanted. Supporters of Virginia's 3rd District had viewed that ruling as a bad sign.

The high court had made clear in several earlier rulings that the use of race as a dominant or controlling rationale in redistricting is not permissible.

Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia, said the latest ruling shows the Supreme Court is acting on a case-by-case basis - not systematically dismantling the Voting Rights Act, as some civil rights activists have feared.

``It's good to see that the Supreme Court is taking a rational approach and that they're not just blindly striking down all black-majority districts,'' he said.

``Our first impression is that it's a helpful decision for Virginia's 3rd District case,'' said Claude Allen, state deputy attorney general.

But 3rd District Republican Chairman Don Moon, one of two GOP activists who challenged the Virginia district's boundaries, doubted the ruling would have any bearing on the Virginia case.

Rep. Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott won 79 percent of the vote in the 3rd District in 1992 to become the first black member of Congress from Virginia this century.

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