Fax to Johnson From Cox RE: Case Update

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Regional Office 

A A Suite 301 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE 1275 K Street, NW 
AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Washington, DC 20005 (202) 682-1300 Fax: (202) 682-1312 

FAX TRANSMISSION 

HERSCHEL JOHNSON 

SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER 

212-219-2052 

ToDD A. Cox 

ASSISTANT COUNSEL 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

1275 K STREET, N.W. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 

(202) 682-1300 

DATE: JANUARY 26, 1999 

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MESSAGE: ATTACHED IS A CASE UPDATE FOR CROMARTIE V. HUNT. 1 TRIED TO PUT IT IN 

LAY PERSON’S LANGUAGE AND ADDED SOME COMMENTARY ON THE ORAL 

ARGUMENTS. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING ELSE. THANKS. 

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Case Update: 

Cromartie v. Hunt 

Cromartie v. Hunt is a Fourteenth Amendment challenge to the constitutionality of North 

Carolina’s First and Twelfth Congressional Districts under the theories established in Shaw v. 

Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993). The Legal Defense Fund, as well as the North Carolina law firm of 

Ferguson, Stein, Wallas, Gresham & Sumter, represent African-American and white voters who 

have intervened to defend the districts’ constitutionality. The case is now pending in the U.S. 

Supreme Court. A brief description of the case follows. 

In Shaw v. Reno, white voters filed a lawsuit under the Fourteenth Amendment 

challenging the North Carolina’s 1992 congressional redistricting plan that sent the first African- 

American Representatives to Congress since Reconstruction. In that case, the U.S. Supreme 

Court held for the first time that white voters could bring an action under the Fourteenth 

Amendment by alleging that a district is so extraordinarily bizarre in shape that, without sufficient 

justification, it could only be viewed as an effort to classify voters on the basis of race. The case 

went back to the district court for a trial after which the district court upheld the district’s 

constitutionality. Again on appeal, in Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996), the U.S. Supreme 

Court this time invalidated the North Carolina Congressional redistricting plan, striking the 

Twelfth Congressional District as unconstitutional. Following the decision, the North Carolina 

General Assembly adopted a revised plan that created a new Twelfth District that was only 47 

percent African-American in total population (originally it was 53 percent total African-American 

population). In the next congressional elections, incumbent Representative Melvin Watt was re- 

elected to represent the new Twelfth Congressional District and incumbent Representative Eva 

Clayton was re-elected to represent the majority-African-American First Congressional District. 

Subsequently, a group of plaintiffs, comprised in part of the same voters who brought the 

initial Shaw case, filed Cromartie v. Hunt, seeking to have the new Twelfth and First 

Congressional Districts ruled unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. We immediately moved to 

intervene and filed renewed motions to intervene at later stages of the litigation. After a hearing 

in March 1998, during which we were not permitted to be heard by the court on the merits of the 

case or on the intervention motions, the court ruled without a trial that the Twelfth District was 

unconstitutional. Even though it was not a majority-African-American district, the three-judge 

district court held that race was the primary motivation for District Twelve’s lines, as shown by its 

shape and the inclusion of majority-African-American voting precincts and the exclusion of 

selected majority-white voting precincts. The three-judge district court did not hold that the First 

Congressional District was unconstitutional and ordered that the parties proceed to trial on the 

constitutionality of the First District. The three-judge court held that the First District’s peculiar 

shape was due to the State’s desire to protect neighboring incumbent Representatives; if the 

district had been drawn differently, there would have been two incumbents in the adjacent Third 

District. The court permanently barred the State from using the redistricting plan and ordered the 

State to devise a new congressional plan before the 1998 elections. We renewed our motion to 

intervene in order to participate in the proceedings on any new plan. 

Consequently, the State developed a new plan, but also appealed the three-judge district 

 



    

court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, while the three-judge district court finally 

granted our motion to intervene, it did so after the deadline for our clients to file an appeal of the 

court’s opinion. Therefore, we filed a motion to intervene as parties in the Supreme Court to 

press our clients’ rights on appeal and defend the Twelfth District. The Court granted our motion 

in October and we completed filing briefs in the case in December. On appeal, as we did below, 

we argued that while politics, not race, primarily drove the creation of the plan, the State was 

justified in considering race during the redistricting process given its long history of racial 

discrimination and exclusion of African-Americans from the political process. 

Oral arguments were held January 20, 1999, during which Walter E. Dellinger argued for 

the Appellant State of North Carolina and James A. Feldman argued for amicus curiae United 

States. The questions and arguments focused primarily on whether the district court was 

incorrect in ruling that the Twelfth Congressional District was unconstitutional without benefit of 

a full trial and based only on such a limited record. In particular, the Justices’ questions centered 

on what role race played in the creation of the plan and to what extent politics, rather than race, 

was the primary factor motivating the drawing of the Twelfth District’s lines. A decision is 

expected by July 1999.