Court Takes Case on Voting Rights (New York Times)

    THE NBw. YORK TIMES TUBS,DAY APRIL 4 IryA18

COURT TAKES CASE

ON I/OTING RICIITS

N. Carolina Dispute lnvolves

Proving Bias in Districting

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Sp61d to Ttc Nd Yort TtE

WASHINGTON, April 29 - The Su"
preme Court set t}le stage today for tbc
first maior legal test of the ammded
Voting Rights Act, which Congress re
wrote three years ago to make it easler
to pnove inlringements of the rigbt to
vote.

At the urging of the Reagan Admtnis-
tration, and'over the objection ol the
NAACP Irgal Defense and Educa-
tional Fund, the Court agreed to lrear
an appeal by the State of North Caro
lina from a finding that a l$il r€dis-
tricting plan violated the nery law.

At issue in the appeal is how thc
courts should lnterpret the central
command of the ameaded law: ttrat a
voting procedure "which reults in a
denial orabridgment of the right ol any
citizen of the United States to vot€ (n
accormt of race or color" is illepl.

Cmgress adopted this larUuage tn
order to overnrle a Supreme Canrt
decision that interpreted the origlnal
1965 Voting Rig[ts Act as requirint
proof of intentional discriminatic. lt is
much more difficult to prove discrimt-
natory intent than to identify a dis-
criminatory result. President Ro888n
resisted the effort to amend tlre law,
but eventually acquiesced in the lece ol
bipa.rusan political pressune.

Dlspute on Seveo Dtstrlcts
A special three-judge Federal Dis-

trtct Court in North Carolina ruled last
year that the state violated the law ln
the lines drasn for seven state leglsla-
tive districts in response to the lm
cenriulr. The court said the redistricting
diluted the voting strength of tlre black
population because, while it would
have been leasiUe to drat so@e dls.
trlcts wlth stzable black maJorlttea, all
but or of the challengcd dlstrtcB bld
whlte maiorities.

The District Court s@flcelly dtsa-
vowed an htcodon to guarenta "pG
portlonal rcpresentetton" to bhck
vpters, saylry insteed that ln ltgft of
the area's history and of tlle rrluctance
of whites to vote for blact. candidates,
changes were rcquired in order to give
black voters an equal oppornmity to
participate in the political prooess.

In the amended Voting Rights Act,
Congress specified that tlte law did not
$ve any group a right to election "in
numbers equal to their pmportion in
the population."

After receiving the state's appeal
lsst fall, the Supreme Court asked the
Justice Department for its views of the
case. In its brief liled earlier this
mqrtll, tlle department infuriated civil
rittts lawyqrs by arguing thst the
lwer court's interpretation of the Vot-
int Rights Act was "fundamentally
flawed."

The brief said that despite the Dis-
trict Court's disavowal of a prqor-
tlonal represemtation standard, the
decision in fact incorporated such a
gtaodard by ignoring the "signiflcant
electoral success" tlnt black candi-
dates had actrieved in the challenged
dtstricts. The de,partment said that in
flve districts, wtrich elect a totat of 22
state legislators, five blacks had been
elcted in recent elections. The only ex-
plenation for the District Court's disap
proval of these districts, the depart-
m€nt said, was tlut the cotrrt erron&
osly believed in "guaranteed electoral
qrccessi in proportiqr to the black per-
oentage of the population."

Succesc Termed Modest
"Minority yoters hlve no rtght to the

creatidl of safe electoral districts
merely because they could feasibly be
drawn," the brief said.

In response the NAACP Irgal De-
lemse and Educatiqnl Fund, rePre
lenting the black plaintiffs, said the
District Court had prdperly cmducted
8 "penetrating iDquiry" into the elec-
toral and racial history of the area, in
which the rec€ot, and modest, black
success was only qre lactor to be con-
sidered. Sixteen members of the 170-
member Legislsture are black, less
than l0 percent in a state with a 22 per-
cent black populatict.

A group of North Carolina Republi-
cans liled a brief insupport of the plain-
tiffs, charging that the Government's
brief was "unsourd and inconsistemt"
andwas based ona one-sided Pre€nta-
tloo of tbe evidence.

Lani Guinier, the lawyer for the legal
defense fund who bandled the case,
said today that in her view, the Reagan
Administration had "seized this case
as an q,porttmity to try to persuade the
Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rigbts
Act." She said it was tlle first time in a
voting riShts case tiat the Justice DG.
partmenitad "openly aUSDed itself in

fb cas, ltcaburgb v. Glntlce,
SillIL rlll bc rrttEl6 !rll.

.the Supreme Court with a Ju
found by e lotGr court to bc a