Did the questioned reapportionment (with the snakelike 12th district) provide an advantage to the minority groups or to the white voters? This was to designed to prevent any discrimination by race and North Carolina thought this plan was completely aligned with the request of the General Assembly guidelines. These principles apply not only to legislation that contains explicit racial distinctions, but also to those "rare" statutes that, although race-neutral, are, on their face, "unexplainable on grounds other than race." Now the claim was whether making a district based on race was racially adequate and fair for everyone. of the profession. 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. [9] Some of these methods included poll taxes, which many could not afford, literacy tests, that many could not pass, and grandfather clauses, which stated that one can only vote if their grandfather voted. ThoughtCo. Gerrymandering | Definition, Litigation, & Facts | Britannica 80 0 obj Review questions How does redistricting affect the behavior of members of Congress? [10] This changed with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed these racially discriminatory practices and required government supervision for states that had less than 50 percent of non-White citizens registered to vote. <> endstream 0000035151 00000 n A federal court upheld the plan as not violating the "one person one vote" principle nor violating the Equal Protection Clause. The North Carolina General Assembly submitted the plan to the U.S. Attorney General for preclearance under the Voting Rights Act, but it was rejected by the US Department of Justice which was led by Attorney General Janet Reno. Therefore, North Carolina created a plan that resulted in two majority-black districts. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Rect[123.813 154.941 292.338 163.95]/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> 0000022159 00000 n The Justice Department accepted this revision. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. Many of these cases are controversial or were decided 5-4. Between 1962-1964, the Warren Court created a law known as "one person, one vote" as a right protected under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. = kd41Ss!9Q As a result, it is possible for courts to interpret Shaw differently. The fact that it now chooses to apply strict scrutiny when a law is meant to benefit a race that has been the subject of historical discrimination makes no sense. She has also worked at the Superior Court of San Francisco's ACCESS Center. The Equal Protection Clause is only violated when a law seeks to hurt a minority group in voting. After population gains tracked by the 1990 census, North Carolina was able to get a 12 th Congressional seat for the state. [7] Section 2 of this act opposes using discriminatory voting practices in the election process and that in itself prohibits gerrymandering based on race. <> Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. R`W_2}aR?)Z~[J&]TB5{j({^M[%&(R^#HOa endobj %%EOF The purpose of "one person, one vote" is that "one man's vote in a congressional election would be worth as much as another's." endobj It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our state legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny.