The Supreme Court ruled Monday that North Carolina relied too heavily on race when redrawing two congressional districts in the Tar Heel State. The justices unanimously rejected the \u201creshuffle\u201d<\/em> of voters in District 1 and voted 5-3 to reject that of District 12. The decision upheld a lower court\u2019s ruling<\/a> from last February.<\/p>\n “The Constitution entrusts states with the job of designing congressional districts,” <\/em>Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority. “But it also imposes an important constraint: A state may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason.”<\/em><\/p>\n In recent statewide and federal elections, North Carolina split along partisan lines, but Republicans hold 10 of the 13 congressional districts in 2016, compared to only six in 2010. The GOP-controlled legislature, which redrew the map in 2013, argued that its redistricting effort was an attempt to protect majorities for its politicians, which is allowed, and not a way to diminish the impact of minority voters.<\/p>\n The justices disagreed, finding that the 1st District \u2012 in which the black voting-age population increased from 47.6 percent to 52.65 percent \u2012 “produced boundaries amplifying divisions between blacks and whites,”<\/em> while in the 12th \u2012 in which the black voting-age population increased from 43.7 percent to 50.66 percent \u2012 “race, not politics, accounted for the district’s reconfiguration,”<\/em> Kagan wrote.<\/p>\n Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, dissented on the court\u2019s ruling for the 12th District, believing that the district was redrawn to help Republicans, not to disenfranchise black voters in neighboring districts.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n “Partisan gerrymandering is always unsavory, but that is not the issue here,”<\/em> Alito wrote, referring to redistricting that favors one party. “So long as the legislature chose to retain the basic shape of District 12 and to increase the number of Democrats in the district, it was inevitable that the Democrats brought in would be disproportionately black.”<\/em><\/p>\n Monday\u2019s ruling, Cooper v. Harris, is significant because of a 2013 decision in which the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn a key part of the Voting Rights Act<\/a> (VRA) of 1965. This law was put in place during the Civil Rights Movement to obstruct voting for African-Americans in historically racist states as part of the systemic discrimination known as Jim Crow laws, which were adopted in the century following the abolition of slavery.<\/p>\n The part that was invalidated, Section 4, explained the formula used by Congress to identify regions of the US subject to extra scrutiny when local lawmakers try to change election rules. States that prevented African Americans from registering to vote or running for office, in addition to other infractions, were singled out by Section 4.<\/p>\n Despite the 2013 decision, federal courts still found that state redistricting and voter identification laws are discriminatory. Along with such rulings in North Carolina<\/a>, judges held that two different<\/a> strict voter ID laws<\/a> in Texas and the use of prison populations to manipulate voting districts<\/a> in Florida and Virginia were all unconstitutional.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court also upheld the practice of creating voting districts based on the total population<\/a>, throwing out a challenge last April that would have seen them redrawn based on eligible voters<\/a> instead. The decision was seen as a boon to the Democrats, as accounting for the total population, which includes children, felons, and noncitizens, can lead to vast differences in the number of voters in a particular district, as well as differences in the power of those voters.<\/p>\n
\n ![\"\u00a9](\"https:\/\/img.rt.com\/files\/2016.10\/thumbnail\/5812756cc36188377a8b4568.jpg\")
\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n