Supreme Court Redistricting Decisions Reminscent of the End of Reconstruction says NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

    JUL-85-1995 15:19 MCKINNEY & MCDOWELL ASSOC P.G. 

McKinney & McDowell Associates 

IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Leila McDowell or 
June 30, 1995 Dara Jackson 

202/833-9771 

SUPREME COURT REDISTRICTING DECISIONS REMINISCENT OF 
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION 

SAYS NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

Elaine R. Jones, Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund, Inc., responded to the Supreme Court's decision invalidating 

Georgia's majority-African American Eleventh Congressional District by noting that it 
"parallels the post-Reconstruction purge of African-Americans from elected offices and 

voting rolls throughout the South." Jones said that the Court's decision in Miller v. 

Johnson was "a dangerous step towards the exclusion of African-Americans from 

meaningful political participation that plagued this nation for more than the first half of 

this century, and has only recently been reversed by the passage and vigorous 

enforcement of the Voting Rights Act." 

In a decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, five members of the Supreme 
Court let stand a decision by a Georgia federal court which held that the Eleventh 
Congressional District was unconstitutional. The ruling came two weeks after the 
Court's decision, in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, that all "racial classifications" 

are subject to strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause. The majority opinion 

in Miller v. Johnson similarly held that if racial considerations were "predominant" 

factors in the development of an election district, the district, regardless of its 

appearance, must receive the most exacting judicial review. 

Jones described the majority opinion in Miller as "especially disturbing" because 
it "reflects no consideration of the present-day reality and egregious history of 
exclusion” that compelled the creation of the Eleventh Congressional District. Jones 

notes that the evidence before the Court clearly showed that African-Americans in 
Georgia were historically excluded from the political process and that their political 

power continues to be minimized today by the persistence of racially polarized voting 
in the state. 

"Under these circumstances." Jones said, "districts like Georgia's Eleventh 
Congressional are the only effective way of ensuring that African-Americans enjoy an 

equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of choice 
to Congress." 

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LDF-Sup' Court Redistricting/Page two 

Jones indicated that the Court's new "predominant" standard raises more 

questions than it answers. "Two years ago, the Court announced that ‘bizarreness' 

(strangely shaped districts) was the problem and the country spent two years and 

millions of dollars in litigation trying to figure out what is ‘bizarre’ in the hard fought 
political arena of redistricting. Now, the Court has indicated that ‘bizarreness' is not the 
touchstone, and has announced a new test focused on whether race was the 

‘predominant, motivating factor.’ The floodgates to massive litigation have been thrown 
open." 

The Court also took action in four other cases concerning majority-minority 
districts included in congressional redistricting plans enacted by Souther states after 
the 1990 Census. In Louisiana v. Hays, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the 
Court, reversed the decision of a Louisiana federal court which invalidated Louisiana's 

Fourth Congressional District. Justice O'Connor ruled that since all of the voters 
challenging the district live in the Fifth Congressional District rather than in the district 

which they now challenge, they could not maintain their constitutional challenge to the 

district. 

The Court summarily affirmed a lower court's validation of California's creation 

of nine African-American and Hispanic congressional districts, apparently because the 
Califomia districts were "compact," as required by that State's Constitution. Jones saw 
a "ray of hope" in the California decision, which indicates that the intentional creation 

of a majority-minonity district will not automatically mean that race or ethnicity was the 

"predominant" factor. 

The Court also decided to hear arguments next term in two other congressional 
redistricting cases now on appeal, Shaw v. Hunt, a challenge to North Carolina's 

majority-African American and Twelfth Congressional Districts, and Vera v. Bush, a 

case in which a Texas federal court invalidated three majority-minority congressional 

districts. Jones views the Court's decision to hear the Vera appeals, as well as the 

decision in Hays, as presenting opportunities for the Court to "reconsider the course it 

has embarked on in Johnson." Jones explained: "In the aftermath of Reconstruction, 

African-American representation was not purged in one fatal blow, but one by one until 

the last African-American left Congress in 1901. It would be tragic for the Court to 
take the country back down that road again at the end of this Century. The Court next 

term has the chance to make clear that the Georgia decision is not the first step down 
that road, but rather an unfortunate detour away from the path of democratic inclusion." 

He 

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