The North Carolina Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down two North Carolina congressional districts by saying that the state relied too heavily on race in drawing them.
"A State may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court's opinion. "In this case, a three-judge District Court ruled that North Carolina officials violated that bar when they created two districts whose voting-age populations were majority black." The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.
The North Carolina state Legislature is a Republican majority, it redrew the district lines after the 2010 census. Neither had majority-black voting-age populations before the redrawing, and both did after.
In the District 1, the number of black voters grew to 52.7% from 48.6$, according to the court. Likewise in District 12, a narrow area in western North Carolina, the number increased to 50.7% from 43.8%.
The Associated Press seeing the boosting of black voters in these two districts wrote, “the result was to weaken African-American voting strength elsewhere in North Carolina."
The Supreme Court's decision is a "major victory for voting rights plaintiffs, who have succeeded in turning the racial gerrymandering cause of action into an effective tool to go after partisan gerrymanders in Southern states," Hasen added.
“The Court made it clear that it would not allow states to get away with an unlawful racial gerrymandering by claiming that it's just politics," Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. "This is a critical decision as communities prepare for the 2020 redistricting cycle, where states would still be able to purposely create legitimate majority-minority districts, consistent with this opinion."
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who is a Democrat, applauded the Court’s decision: "The North Carolina Republican legislature tried to rig Congressional elections by drawing unconstitutional districts that discriminated against African Americans and that's wrong."
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