Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids districting plans that will have a discriminatory effect on minority groups. In 1991, a group of white voters in North Carolina challenged the state's new congressional district map, which had two "majority-minority" districts. See ante, at 642, 649, 652, 657-658. NO racial gerrymandering; race cannot be the sole or predominant factor in redrawing legislative boundaries; majority-minority districts. The first question is easy. E. Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, p. 590 (1988). Constitutional Law for a Changing America Resource Center, 13. Instead, the General Assembly enacted a revised redistricting plan, 1991 N. C. Extra Sess. But the State must have a "'strong basis in evidence for [concluding] that remedial action [is] necessary.'" Majority Opinion/Decision. Suppose a person who buys only wine and cheese is Washington v. Davis(1976). US attorney general rejected a North Carolina congressional reappointment plan because the plan created only one black majority district, 1. )-forecloses the claim we recognize today. The only justification I can imagine would be the preservation of "sound districting principles," such as compactness and contiguity. I did not join Part IV of his opinion in United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 U. S. 144 (1977), because I felt that its "additional argument," id., at 165, was not necessary to decide that case. plan did not minimize or unfairly cancel out white voting strength." The difficulty of proof, of course, does not mean that a racial gerrymander, once established, should receive less scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause than other state legislation classifying citizens by race. Race in redistricting is permissible as long as configurations are not too extreme, ch 7 part 2 prep pronouns and demonstratives, Christina Dejong, Christopher E. Smith, George F Cole, Government in America: Elections and Updates Edition, George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, Robert L. Lineberry. Accordingly, they held that plaintiffs were not entitled to relief under the Constitution's, NORTH CAROLINA CONGRESSIONAL PLAN Chapter 7 of the 1991 Session Laws (1991 Extra Session). 2 It should be noted that 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids any State to impose specified devices or procedures that result in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color. The district lines may be drawn, for example, to provide for compact districts of contiguous territory, or to maintain the integrity of political subdivisions. The fact that a demonstration of discriminatory effect was required in that case was not a function of the kind of claim that was made. Croson, 488 U. S., at 494 (plurality opinion); see also id., at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment). Evidence of the district's shape is therefore convincing, but it is also cumulative, and, for our purposes, irrelevant. whether appellants' complaint stated a claim under constitutional provisions other than the Fourteenth Amendment. There is thus no theoretical inconsistency in having two distinct approaches to equal protection analysis, one for. As a result of the 1990 census, North Carolina gained one congressional seat, increasing its House membership to twelve and requiring the state legislature to redraw the state's congressional districts. 808 F. Supp. The Court, while seemingly agreeing with this position, warns that the State's redistricting effort must be "narrowly tailored" to further its interest in complying with the law. income. It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our state legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny. The State chose to submit its plan to the Attorney General for preclearance. The Court applied the same reasoning to the "uncouth twenty-eight-sided" municipal boundary line at issue in Gomillion. Shaw v. Reno is an important decision because it represents a conservative shift on the Court. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. The Constitution does not call for equal sized districts . 808 F. (1986) (teacher layoffs), electoral districting calls for decisions that nearly always require some consideration of race for legitimate reasons where there is a racially mixed population. Racial classifications of any sort pose the risk of lasting harm to our society. The three-judge District Court held that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the federal appellees. ), or that such had been the State's intent, see id., at 179-180 (Stewart, J., joined by Powell, J., concurring in judgment). McCain v. Lybrand, 465 U. S. 236, 245 (1984) (quoting South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 334, 335 (1966)).5 Like New York, North Carolina failed to prove to, 5 In Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 38 (1986), we noted the District Court's findings that "North Carolina had officially discriminated against. As for the second question, I believe that the Equal Protection Clause is violated when the State creates the kind of uncouth district boundaries seen in Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725 (1983), Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960), and this case, for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for members of a minority group to win an election.2 The. See, e. g., Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474, 484, n. 2 (1990) ("[A] prosecutor's assumption that a black juror may be presumed to be partial simply because he is black violates the Equal Protection. Five of the eight Justices who participated in the decision resolved the case under the framework the Court previously had adopted for vote-dilution cases. I summed up my views on this matter in the plurality opinion in Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109 (1986).3 Because districting inevitably is the expression of interest group politics, and because "the power to influence the political process is not limited to winning elections," id., at 132. The U.S. Supreme Court and the federal government should encourage states to find ways to comply with the act, even if compliance results in oddly shaped districts, the attorney argued. It included all or portions of twenty-eight counties. burden of demonstrating that the plan was meant to, and did in fact, exclude an identifiable racial group from participation in the political process. The case established that any legislative redistricting must be strictly scrutinized and that any laws related to racially motivated redistricting must be held to narrow standards and -dividing voters into districts bc of race is segregation. In that, state efforts to remedy minority vote dilution are wholly unlike what typically has been labeled "affirmative action." Writing for three Members of the Court, I justified this conclusion as follows: "It is true that New York deliberately increased the nonwhite majorities in certain districts in order to enhance the opportunity for election of nonwhite representatives from those districts. Rather, the issue is whether the classification based on race discriminates. Indeed, the facts of the case would not have supported such a claim. But just because there frequently will be a constitutionally permissible use of race in electoral districting, as exemplified by the consideration of race to comply with the Voting Rights Act (quite apart from the consideration of race to remedy a violation of the Act or the Consti-. We express no view as to whether appellants successfully could have challenged such a district under the Fourteenth Amendment. He read JUSTICE WHITE'S opinion in UJO to authorize race-based reapportionment only when the State employs traditional districting principles such as compactness and contiguity. Regardless whether that description was accurate, see ante, at 645, it seriously deflates the precedential value which the majority seeks to ascribe to Gomillion: As I see it, the case cannot stand for the proposition that the intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more, gives rise to an equal protection challenge under the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 53-54. In my view there is no justification for the Court's determination to depart from our prior decisions by carving out this narrow group of cases for strict scrutiny in place of the review customarily applied in cases dealing with discrimination in electoral districting on the basis of race. SHAW ET AL. I doubt that this constitutes a discriminatory purpose as defined in the Court's equal protection cases-i. 808 F. Its decision not to create the more compact southern majority-minority district that was suggested, on the other hand, was more likely a result of partisan considerations. Wright illustrates the difficulty of determining from the face of a single-member districting plan that it purposefully distinguishes between voters on the basis of race. Once the Attorney General has found that a proposed redistricting change violates 5's nonretrogression principle in that it will abridge a racial minority's right to vote, does "narrow tailoring" mean that the most the State can do is preserve the status quo? For the following sentence, locate the action verb and underline it twice. We noted probable jurisdiction. to Juris. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993. Ibid. The facts of this case mirror those presented inUnited Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey(1977) (UJO), where the Court rejected a claim that creation of a majority-minority district violated the Constitution, either as aper sematter or in light of the circumstances leading to the creation of such a district. Action verbs tell what the subject is doing or what is being done to the subject. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the use of racial gerrymandering in North Carolina's reapportionment plan. Respondent Argument (Reno) 1. What is the NPV of the new plant? Did North Carolina residents claim that the 1990 redistricting plan discriminated on the basis of race raise a valid constitutional issue under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause? Its central purpose is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race. 392 (WDNC), and this Court summarily affirmed, 506 U. S. 801 (1992). See ante, at 666-667, and n. 6 (dissenting opinion). Supp., at 468-469. 412 U. S., at 754. 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