Voting Rights Project Technical Information Bulletin 81-1 Justice Department Rejects Virginia Senate and House Plans

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VOTING RIGHTS PROJECT
TECHNICAL INFORI,IAT ION BULLETIN 8 1- I
August 20, 1981

JUSTICE DEPARTI4ENT REJECTS VIRGTNTA SENATE AND HOUSE PLANS

On July L7 and July 31 the U.S. Attorney General
lodged objections pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 to the 1981 Virginia Senate and House of Delergates
reapportionm'ent plans for dilution of black votinq strength.
These objections bar Virginia from implementing the objected-
to districts in legislative elections. The objections are
significant because they are the first Section 5 objections
to legislative reapportionment plans Iodeed by officials of
the Reagan Administration, and establish important precedents
for Section 5 review of future legislative reapportionment
submissions.

The Senate PIan

In his July L7 objection, the Attornelz General objected
to a di-vision of the black community in Norfolk between two
Senate districts. According to the I9B0 Census, Norfolk has
93,987 black residents, enough to constitute a majority for
a state Senate distrj-ct. This black population is most
heavily ccncentrated in a number of contiguous, majority
black voting precincts in the southern part of the city.
The boundary line between Senate District.s 5 and 6 ran in a
jagged fashion through the middle of the black community,
dividing it almost evenly between the two districts (see
map) . One district was 622 whir,e and the other was 60ea

white.

Newspaper reports indicated that duri-ng the floor debate,
Sen. Douglas Wilder, the only black in the t/irginia Senate,
argued that the plan "d:-lutes votes." He proposed a floor
amendment containi-ng an alLernati.ze conf iguration rvhich rvould
have avoided slicing up this black concentration, but the
amendment was overwhelmingly ief eated. Under Sen. I,iilder's
plan, one drstrict would have been majority black.



, LAWYERS' COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW

racial purpose or effect. "
following evidence:

Chesapeake

Bou

- 
Jsn31e District Boundry

r r Senator Wilder proposed district boundry

In his letter of obj ectj.on the Attorney General found
evidence of both discriminatory purpose and discriminatory
effect. "I am unable to conclude, as I must under the
Voting Rights Act, that the presently proposed district
lines within Norfolk were drawn without any discriminatory

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This conclusion was based on the

I. [O]ne of the most striking elements of the plan was
its sinilarity to the L97L Senate plan for Norfolk which also
divided concentrations of Negro voters in the face of available
alternatives, and to vrhich the Attorney General objected on
May 7, L97L.

2. The plan had a discriminatory irnpact which was not
necessary to proper redistricting:

"Our inquiry has revealed that the boundary between
districts 5 and 6 in the I9BI plan cuts through the
black community in such a way that neither district
has more than a 37-percent black population. At the

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.LAWYERS: COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW
i

same time, our analysis shows that the Senate
rejected an alternative configuration which

' would have combined contj-guous black neighbor-
hoods, producing a district in whi-ch black
persons would have constituted a majority."

3. The Senate was aware of the discrinrinatory irnpact of
its plan. The evidence showed that this choice "was made
with the fu1] awareness and expectation that it would fragment
the black electorate and create two majority white districts."
The Virginia Senate also "was aware" that the Attorney General
had objected to the 197I plan because it unnecessarily frag-
mented black voter concentrations.

4. "The Cornmonwealth has ?resented no plausible non-
racial justification for its choice of district lines in
Norfolk, strikingly similar to the unacceptable L97L pIan. "

The House Plan

The JuIy 3I objection to six districts in Virginia's'
1981 House pian was signed by [^/illiarn Bradford Reynolds, the
new Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights
Division. It was based on the fragmentation of a preexisting
majority black district among five new mqlority white districts,
and the combination of a majority black city with a predomi-
nantly white city to create a majority white district..

Prior to the 1981 redistricting, the Virginia House of
Delegates had three majority black districts (based on 1980
Census data) from which seven direct delegates t{ere elected;
the 1981 House plan reduced the number of majority black
districts to one (Richmond, which is only 5lZ black) , elect-
ing only four delegates. Southside Virqinia (the area
directly south of Richmond) contains five majority black,
rural counties. In the prior plan, four of these majority
black counties were contained in one distri-ct, District 45,
which was majority black (53.098 black) accoroinq to the l-980
Census. fn the lg8l plan District 15 was splib up and frag-
mented among five new districts (two of r.vhich Dj-stricts 46 and
47 were in a floterial district) and each of the four majority
black counties formerly in District 45 was placed in a separate
majority white district. One district (new District 2i) com-
bined three counties, two of which (Dinwiddie and Greensville)
were separated by the Nottoway River and had a common boundary
which consisted of a two-mile stretch of that river.

During depositions in the Virqinia legislative reappor-
tionment Iitigation (wh.i-ch r"ras qoincl on :i:,rultaneously 'vit-hthe Justice Department's Section 5 review of the plan), one
of the members of the House elections committee t-estified
that committee members ack:rowledged in infornal conversations
that splitting up this majority black Cistrict would clilute
black voting strength:

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LAWYDRS' COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW

3. "Testimony prepared for the pending lawsuits
indicates that the legislature was aware that dispersing
the'majority black counties that were in former district 45
would necessarily dilute the votinq strength of blacks in
this area. "

4. Violation of the historic practice in combining
Colonial Heights with Petersburg.

5. Colonial Heights officials preferred being joined
with Chesterfield CountY.

6. Submitted material showed that there were a number
of options available tha.t would not have had the effect of
diluting the voting strength of the black citizens of
Petersburg.

Community qroups also had filed Section 5 comments with
the Department of Justice urging the Attorney General to
object to at.-large voting in multi-member House districts.,in
Ri6hmond, Noyfoll, Portsmouth, Newport News, and Hampton.'
Data submitted showed that each of these cities has a city-
wide white voting majority which submerges the votes of
substantial black population concentrations large enough for
separate representation in majority black single-mernber
diitricts. The Attorney General, however, did not object to
these districts, apparently being of the view that because
these multi-member- aistricis wer6 in the prior plan (although
in different forms and with different numbers of delegates),
these multi-member districts in the 1981 plan did not consti-
tute a change subject to Section 5 review. See Beer v.
States, 425 U.S. 130, 138-39 (f976).

United

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