Test Established on Legality of Voting Schemes (Washington Post)

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10 Lawmakers Join 
Voting-Rights Case 
Dole Group Calls Justice Dept. 'Misguided' 

By Howard Kurtz 
Washington Post Stall Writer 

Senate Majority Leader Robert J, 
Dole (R-Kan.) and nine other mem­
bers of Congress told the Supreme 
Court yesterday that the Reagan 
administration's position in a pend­
ing voting rights case blatantly mis­
represents the purpose of a voting 
rights bill they wrote three years 
ago. 

In a friend-of-the-court brief sub­
mitted in a North Carolina redis­
tricting case, the law's chief au­
thors-five Republicans and five 
Democrats-said the Justice De­
partment's position in the case "was 
expressly rejected by Congress" 
when it amended the Voting Rights 
Act in 1982. 

The Republican National Com­
mittee and Republican Gov. James 
G. Martin of North Carolina also 
opposed the administration's posi­
tion in separate briefs yesterday. 

A federal appeals court last year 
struck down North Carolina's sys­
tem ·Of electing several legislators 
from a single district, saying this 
diluted minority voting strength in 
some areas. The Justice Depart­
ment contends that Congress never 
intended the Jaw to apply to such 
cases, and that the appeals court is 
attempting to guarantee minorities 
a certain number of legislative seats 
based on their percentage of the 
population. 

But Dole and his colleagues · said 
that this case is clearly covered by 

See VOTING, A4, Col. 4 



10 Members of Congress 
Join in Voting-Rights Case 

VOTING, From AI 

the 1982 amendments and that their views 
were spelled out in a Senate report accom­
panying the compromise bill. 

Calling the justice Department's position 
"misguided," the lawmakers' brief said the 
high court "should nat cut the 1982 amend­
ments free from their legislative history and 
adopt an interpretation of that legislation 
inconsistent with the view of the congres­
sional majority." 

The three briefs released yesterday un­
derscored the unusual split between the 
Reagan administration and much of the Re­
publican Party over the politically sensitive 
issue. A brief submitted by members of 
Congress explaining their legislative action 
to the Supreme Court is extremely unusual. 

The other senators who joined Dole are 
Republicans Charles Grassley (Iowa) and 
Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (Md.) and Dem­
ocrats Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), How­
ard M. Metzenbaum (Ohio) and Dennis De­
Concini (Ariz.). The brief was also signed by 
two House Republicans, F. James Sensen­
brenner (Wis.) and Hamilton Fish Jr. (N.Y.), 
and two House Democrats, Peter W. Ro­
dino (N.j .) and Don Edwards (Calif.). 

The case, Thornburg v. Gingles, is the 
first major Supreme Court test of the 1982 
amendments, which said that local election 
laws ,could be found discriminatory if their 
result, and not simply their intent, was to 
penalize black voters. The law instructeq 
judges to consider the "totality of 'circum­
stances" in each case. 

"Anyone who followed the debates in 
1982 knows the so-called compromise lan­
guage was not a model of clarity and the 
issue would be litigated in court," Justice 
Department spokesman Terry H. Eastland 
said yesterday. "It's not surprising there 
would be people on the Hill who have a par­
ticular view of what the law meant. We'll 
see how the court interprets what the in­
tent of Congress was." 

The Reagan administration strongly re­
sisted parts of the 1982 voting rights 
amendments but later embraced the final 
product. 

Dole alluded to this mixed record at a 
news conferen5=e in Kansas yesterday, 

"If the administration supported the bill 
that passed the Congress, then they prob­
ably shouldn't have intervened," he said. 

Saying that the NAACP Legal Defense 
Fund, which represents the black plaintiffs, 
encouraged him to enter the case, Dole 
said: "I think too often we [Republicans] are 
sort of on the periphery. We're never really 
in there when black Americans need our 
help." 

Ralph G. Neas, director of the Leadership 
Conference on Civil Rights, said the bipar­
tisan brief highlighted the "extremism" of 
Attorney General Edwin Meese III and As­
sistant Attorney General William Bradford 
Reynolds. 

"They are being isolated," Neas said. 
"Having failed legislatively, they are making 
an attempt in the Supreme Court to sabo­
tage the Voting Rights Act." 

The government's amicus brief-filed 
· last month by Reynolds and Acting Solicitor 

General Charles Fried-said a three-judge 
appeals panel erred when it struck down 
North Carolina's multimember districts. It 
noted that several black candidates: have 
won election in these districts in recent 
years. 

The Justice Department said the appeals 
court ruling, if upheld, would mean that 
"wherever there has been discrimination in \ 
the past ·and some measure of racial polar-. 
ization , .. district courts will be free to 
strike down virtually any scheme that does 
not____::or even those that do-deliver elec­
toral successes proportional to minority 
voting strength. That is not what Congress 
intended." 

The brief continued: "Minority voters 
have no right to the creation of safe elec­
toral districts merely because they could 
feasibly be drawn ... . Nor can it be pre­
s4med · ... that 'safe' seats for minority of 
jiceholders would necessarily be in the in­
terests of minority voters." ' 

The department cited Senate' opponents 
of the 1982 amendments and said the Sen­
ate report should not be given "undue em­
phasis" because it reflected the views of one 
faction. 

But the 10 lawmakers countered that "at ' 

( 

no point in the debates did any senator 
claim that the majority statement of the -~ 
Senate report was inaccurate." 

Their brief said the justice Department's 
stance "could raise an artificial barrier to 
legitimate claims of denial of voting rights 
.... Congress did not intend that limited ' 
electoral success by a minority would fore­
close" a voting rights lawsuit. 

Martin's brief took a similar tack. "There 
can be little question that multimember dis- : 
tricts in North Carolina dilute the effect of 
black voters," it said. , 

Republicans and blacks in North Carolina : 
have found it historically difficult to win 
elections in multimember districts. Repub­
licans much prefer the state's newly adopt- ' 
ed single-member districts, which created ' 
not only majority black districts but also 
predominantly white suburban districts at­
tractive to GOP candidates.