10 Lawmakers Join Voting-Rights Case (Washington Post)

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10 lau.makers Join
Yoting-Rights Case
Dole Group Calls lustice Dept,'Misguided'

By Howard Kurta
U.shinglfi P6l Slr(l Wril.t

Senate Majority Leader Robert J.
Dole (R-Kan.) and nine other rnem-
bers of Congress told the Supreme
Court yesterday that the Reagan
administration's po.sition 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<ourt 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 fuas
expressly rejected by Congress"
when it amended the Voting Rights
Act in 1982.

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

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

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

sec VO0ING, A{, CoI'l



Join in Voting-Rights Case
VOTING, From Al

the 1982 amendments and that their vit 'vs
were spelled out in a Senate report accorn-
panying the compromise bill.

Calling the Justice Department's position
"misguided," the lawmakers' brief said the
high court "should not 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 mairrity."

The three briefs released yesterday un-
derscored the unusuat 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 atso signed by
two House Republicans, F. James Sensen-

brenner (lilis.) and Hamilton Fish Jr. (N.Y.),
and two House Democrats, Peter W. Ro'
dino (NJ.) and Don Edwards (Calif.).

The case, Thornburg o. Gingles, is lhe
first major Supreme C.ourt 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 instructed
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. "lt's not surprising there
world be people on the Hill who have a par'
ticular view of what the law rneant. 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 conference in Kansas yesterday.
"If the administration supportd 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: "l think too often we [Republicansl are
sort of on the periphery. We're never really
in there when black Americans need our
help."

Ralph G. Neas, director of the l-eadership
Conference on Civil Rights, said the bipar-
tisan brief highlighted the "extremism" of
Attorney General Edwin Meese III and A.s-

sistant Attorney General William Bradford
Reynolds.

"They are being isolated," Neas taid.
"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-iudge
appeals panel erred when it struck dovn
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, world 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 cottld
feasibly be drawn . . . . Nor can it be pre-
sumed . . . that 'safe' seats for minority oy'

ficehdders would necessarily be in the in-
terests of minority tnters."

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 l0 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 woutd 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.