Supreme Court Reasserts Voting Rights Act

Gerrymandered Virginia 3rd District - note how parts are not even contiguous

When the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder invalidated Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, many racists conservatives joyfully hoped that the Court was on a track to destroying the Act entirely.  Now, in a ruling Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, the Court seemingly sent a message that it is not ready to open the doors to a return of Jim Crow era gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. And here in Virginia, the ruling may be very meaningful in the challenge to the GOP gerrymandered 3rcd Congressional District which was carefully draw to loan minority voters into one district and favor Republicans in the surrounding districts.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The Supreme Court stopped just short of ruling Alabama’s redistricting plan unconstitutional on Wednesday, but it sent a clear message to lawmakers across the country that the Voting Rights Act can’t be used to justify maps that predominately group voters together based on their race.

In a 5-4 ruling, the high court sided with black lawmakers and Democrats in Alabama in throwing out a lower court’s decision that upheld the GOP-drawn state legislative map. This was the court’s second high-stakes decision in two years dealing with the Voting Rights Act and will likely have an effect on redistricting legal battles in states like Virginia and North Carolina.

The case was brought by African-American lawmakers in Alabama who argued that the Republican-controlled Legislature packed thousands of black voters into existing majority-black state legislative districts to secure a GOP-advantage in the other districts.

[T]he ruling simply called the lower court’s decision “legally erroneous” and sent the case back to it without ruling whether Alabama’s redistricting plan is unconstitutional.

“The appeals focus upon the appellants’ claims that new district boundaries create ‘racial gerrymanders’ in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion. “We find that the District Court applied incorrect legal standards in evaluating the claims.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote on the case and joined the court’s four liberal justices to make up the majority.

But while Breyer only remanded the case backed to the lower court for further consideration, he strongly suggested that some of the districts should be deemed unconstitutional. “That Alabama expressly adopted and applied a policy of prioritizing mechanical racial targets above all other districting criteria (save one-person, one-vote) provides evidence that race motivated the drawing of particular lines in multiple districts in the State,” he wrote.

For partisan advantage, Republicans have historically tried to “pack” minorities into districts, while Democrats have attempted to “crack” majority-minority districts in the redistricting process to spread minorities into more districts to boost Democratic candidates, even at the expense of providing safer seats for minority candidates.

States lawmakers — of both parties — will now have to employ a much more nuanced way of using race in the redistricting process, said Justin Levitt, another redistricting expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who also worked as the Democratic National Committee’s National Voter Protection counsel in 2008.

“This isn’t a case about Alabama,” Levitt said. “It’s about how officials consider race. Other states have very similar philosophies as Alabama. The court today said, ‘Guess what? They’re wrong.’”

The court’s ruling is a victory for Democrats in Virginia, where a panel of federal judges ruled recently that the Republican-led Legislature’s decision to pack African-American voters into the 3rd Congressional District, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, was motivated purely by race — a violation of the 14th Amendment.

Virginia’s Republican members of Congress appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The case has given Democrats a chance to push for new lines that could make at least two districts — the 2nd and 4th, currently represented by GOP Reps. Scott Rigell and Randy Forbes, respectively — more competitive once some of the black population from Scott’s district is moved.

“Similar to Alabama, here in Virginia we have suffered from racial gerrymandering by the GOP designed to dilute the voting power of minority voters,” said Morgan Finkelstein, spokeswoman for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Today’s ruling shows that the legal system — and the country — is paying more and more attention to this troubling issue. We need compact, contiguous districts and remain hopeful that Virginia Republicans will stop stalling and work with us towards achieving equal representation for all Virginians.” 

The husband and I used to be in the 2nd District until the Virginia Republicans redrew the boundaries of the 3rd district to move blacks - and certain liberal voting neighborhoods such as ours - into the 3rd district to provide safer seats to GOP Congressman Rigell and Forbes, both of whom need to be voted out of office in my opinion.