THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140564
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF & WIRE REPORT
LENGTH: 112 lines
In two 5-to-4 decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that North Carolina's black-majority 12th Congressional District and similar ``minority-majority'' voting areas in Texas are unconstitutional for racial reasons.
The rulings took a big step toward answering the question raised by two earlier rulings: whether any districts drawn with race in mind will overcome the presumption that using race, at least as a predominant factor, is unconstitutional. The rulings, in 1993 and last year, made majority-black districts open to legal challenge by disaffected voters and subject to searching scrutiny under the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.
Lawyers representing black voters said Thursday that more and more it appeared that no districts would pass muster. ``The noose is tightening,'' Elaine Jones, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., said. Laughlin McDonald, director of the southern regional office of the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted the result would be the ``bleaching of Congress'' as well as state and local legislative bodies, as new districts drawn across the South to increase minority representation fall under legal attack.
The approach the court took in the decisions Thursday appears to commit it to an intensive, case-by-case review of these districts. The decisions encompassed 189 pages and, in the Texas case, included a detailed analysis of the three challenged districts, in a plurality opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
In the North Carolina case, the court directed a federal tribunal to redraw the district or order the General Assembly to do it. The ruling, only a few months before November's general election, caused confusion among state officials. North Carolina Attorney General Michael Easley said he did not know whether the high court rulings will force a change or delay the scheduled November general elections.
The serpentine 12th District between Durham and Charlotte, now represented by Rep. Mel Watt, a black Charlotte Democrat, is one of two congressional enclaves redrawn in 1992 by the North Carolina General Assembly to make it easier for African Americans to get elected to Congress.
The 1st Congressional District, that runs from Virginia almost to South Carolina in Eastern North Carolina, was not involved in the rulings.
In Washington, Rep. Eva M. Clayton, D-Warrenton, who represents that area, said she was ``relieved that the Supreme Court did not make the same finding with respect to the First District.''
Clayton said that ``in finding the 12th Congressional District unconstitutional, the court merely reversed the U.S. District Court (in Raleigh) and did not provide further instructions to the court or the state legislature.
``As a result this matter has not been fully resolved by the decision today.''
At a news conference in Washington, Watt said he will wait until a new 12th District is drawn before deciding whether to run for re-election. ``I hope when all is said and done we can show in North Carolina that we deserve to be a color-blind society,'' he said.
The high court specified that only the 12th District, a bizarre voting area that is sometimes no wider than the I-85 right-of-way that it follows, was unconstitutional because a black majority was the main factor in its creation.
In the past, what has affected the 12th District has also affected the 1st District, represented by Clayton, who became the first black and the first woman to go to the U.S. House after the 1992 legislative redistricting.
Robinson Everett, a retired Durham state Superior Court judge, led a coalition of Republican voters who challenged the redistricting in the 12th District on the grounds that it violated their voting rights. On Thursday, Robinson said he was ``pleased, naturally, with the Supreme Court action.''
After a three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court in Raleigh upheld the redistricting, Everett won an order from the Supreme Court in 1993 for a reconsideration by the lower federal tribunal. That court upheld the legality of the redistricting, and Everett asked for relief from the Supreme Court.
He got it Thursday. The Supreme Court made clear it did not intend to allow electoral redistricting that packed voter rolls with blacks and other minorities for the sole purpose of getting them elected to Congress.
One of the two 5-4 votes related to the North Carolina congressional districts and the second unconstitutional ruling related to similar ``racial gerrymandering'' in three Texas districts that were rejected by the court.
Speaking for the majority in the North Carolina cases, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist emphasized the redistricting was unconstitutional because race was the principal consideration when the state legislatures created the ``minority-majority'' districts.
Rehnquist directed the U.S. District Court tribunal to either rewrite the 12th redistricting laws or tell the General Assembly to do so immediately.
Equally strong were the views of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor who wrote the court's second opinion against the minority-weighted district.
``Such districts cause constitutional harm'' because they ``convey the message that political identity is, or should be predominantly racial,'' wrote O'Connor.
O'Connor was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in voting to strike down the congressional districts at issue.
In dissent were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Within hours, minority groups and political activists issued statements that clearly outlined the course of things to come.
Elaine Jones of Raleigh, with the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, told The Associated Press the decisions ``clearly torch the fundamental right of African Americans, Hispanics and others to be included as participatory citizens in this democracy.''
And the AP quoted McDonald of the ACLU as saying: ``The inevitable consequence will be to produce a Congress that is increasingly white at a time when the nation is increasingly diverse.''
Rep. Milton F. Fitch Jr., a Democrat who was redistricting committee co-chairman in the last legislature, said he was disappointed but ``not hostile.''
Fitch, a huge man with huge powers as an acknowledged leader of African Americans in the General Assembly, said he ``thought we did a pretty good job. But I'm not a Supreme Court justice. Now it's up to us to read the opinions and go back to work.'' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by staff writer Mason Peters,
The New York Times and The Associated Press. ILLUSTRATION: U.S. Supreme Court decisions voting
districts gerrymandering by CNB