DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160270

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

REDRAWN VOTING DISTRICTS EARN APPROVAL FROM FEDERAL COURT

A federal Appeals Court panel has approved new congressional districts for North Carolina redrawn by state lawmakers this year.

The unanimous ruling filed Friday by the three-judge panel clears the most significant hurdle facing the redrawn districts, even though one of the architects of the plan said further appeals may follow.

The ruling ``leaves open the question of whether some new person living in the district can file a challenge,'' Sen. Roy Cooper, D-Nash, said Monday. ``A unanimous decision sends a strong message that the plan was appropriate.''

The court decision states that the plan, approved by the General Assembly in March, remedies the racial gerrymandering found in the previous 12th Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C.

The judges also dismissed a claim that the former 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S Rep. Eva Clayton, D-N.C., was racially gerrymandered. The ruling stated the claim was moot since Clayton's district was redrawn.

Watt and Clayton are North Carolina's only black members of Congress.

Legislators were forced to redraw the districts after Duke University law professor RobinsonEverett and a group of white Durham voters claimed that the 12th Congressional District, which stretched from Gastonia to Durham, violated their voting rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last year, calling the 12th District ``racial gerrymandering.'' The court said the district was drawn to favor black candidates.

Everett has said he believed the latest plan was also unconstitutional, but he and the fellow plaintiffs in the original lawsuit did not challenge the latest plan.

Everett said he believed he did not ``have standing'' to challenge the plan because he and the other white Durham voters were no longer in the redrawn 12th district.

The three-judge panel disagreed in their ruling, saying it was doubtful that the reconfigured districts could ``deprive them of standing to challenge the remedial plan.''

Everett said Monday night he had not studied the opinion thoroughly but still believed he and the other plainiffs could not continue to challenge the plan.

``We're in the unusual position of saying something is wrong but not having the standing to do anything about it,'' he said.

The ruling seems to pave the way for future legal challenges. The judges note that their review was ``limited by the dimensions of this civil action as that is defined by the parties and the claims properly before us.''

``Our approval thus does not - cannot - run beyond the plan's remedial adequacy with respect to those parties and the equal protection violation found as to former District 12,'' it states.

But state officials still seemed happy with the ruling.

``I am pleased that the three federal judges reviewing North Carolina's congressional redistricting plan have unanimously approved it,'' said Attorney General Mike Easley. ``Voters need and deserve stable congressional districts. The court's decision that the General Assembly's plan is constitutional will provide this stability.''

The U.S. Justice Department approved the redistricting in June.

After North Carolina's 12th District and the 1st District were drawn in 1992 to favor minority candidates, they sent blacks to Congress for the first time this century.

North Carolina's 12th District is among eight mostly minority districts in Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas that have been disbanded by the Supreme Court or federal district courts since 1993.

The new 12th District still runs along Interstate 85, but only from Charlotte to Greensboro. Blacks do not make up a majority of the population or the registered voters in the district, but Democrats believe it still could favor Watt, who has represented the 12th District since its first election in 1992. KEYWORDS: APPEAL REDISTRICTING VOTING DISTRICTS APPEALS

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