OCTOBER TERM, 1992
Syllabus
SHAW ET AL.
v. RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN
DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA
No. 92-357. Argued April 20, 1993-Decided June 28,1993
To comply with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965-which
prohibits a covered jurisdiction from implementing changes in a
"standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting" without
federal authorization—North Carolina submitted to the Attorney
General a congressional reapportionment plan with one
majority-black district. The Attorney General objected to the plan
on the ground that a second district could have been created to
give effect to minority voting strength in the State's
south-central to southeastern region. The State's revised plan
contained a second majority-black district in the north-central
region. The new district stretches approximately 160 miles along
Interstate 85 and, for much of its length, is no wider than the
1-85 corridor. Appellants, five North Carolina residents, filed
this action against appellee state and federal officials, claiming
that the State had created an unconstitutional racial gerrymander
in violation of, among other things, the Fourteenth Amendment. They
alleged that the two districts concentrated a majority of black
voters arbitrarily without regard to considerations such as
compactness, contiguousness, geographical boundaries, or political
subdivisions, in order to create congressional districts along
racial lines and to assure the election of two black
representatives. The three-judge District Court held that it lacked
subject matter jurisdiction over the federal appellees. It also
dismissed the complaint against the state appellees, finding, among
other things, that, under
United Jewish Organizations of
Williams burgh, Inc. v.
Carey, 430 U. S. 144
(UJO), appellants had failed to state an equal protection
claim because favoring minority voters was not discriminatory in
the constitutional sense and the plan did not lead to proportional
underrepresentation of white voters statewide.
Held:
1. Appellants have stated a claim under the Equal Protection
Clause by alleging that the reapportionment scheme is so irrational
on its face that it can be understood only as an effort to
segregate voters into separate districts on the basis of race, and
that the separation lacks sufficient justification. Pp.
639-652.
631
(a) The District Court properly dismissed the claims against the
federal appellees. Appellants' racial gerrymandering claims must be
examined against the backdrop of this country's long history of
racial discrimination in voting. Pp. 639-642.
(b) Classifications of citizens based solely on race are by
their nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded
upon the doctrine of equality, because they threaten to stigmatize
persons by reason of their membership in a racial group and to
incite racial hostility. Thus, state legislation that expressly
distinguishes among citizens on account of race-whether it contains
an explicit distinction or is "unexplainable on grounds other than
race,"
Arlington Heights v.
Metropolitan Housing
Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 266-must
be narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest.
See,
e. g., Wy
gant v.
Jackson Ed. of
Ed., 476 U. S.
267, 277-278 (plurality opinion). Redistricting legislation
that is alleged to be so bizarre on its face that it is
unexplainable on grounds other than race demands the same close
scrutiny, regardless of the motivations underlying its adoption.
See,
e. g., Gomillion v.
Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339,341. That
it may be difficult to determine from the face of a single-member
districting plan that it makes such a distinction does not mean
that a racial gerrymander, once established, should receive less
scrutiny than other legislation classifying citizens by race. By
perpetuating stereotypical notions about members of the same racial
group-that they think alike, share the same political interests,
and prefer the same candidates-a racial gerrymander may exacerbate
the very patterns of racial bloc voting that majority-minority
districting is sometimes said to counteract. It also sends to
elected representatives the message that their primary obligation
is to represent only that group's members, rather than their
constituency as a whole. Since the holding here makes it
unnecessary to decide whether or how a reapportionment plan that,
on its face, can be explained in nonracial terms successfully could
be challenged, the Court expresses no view on whether the
intentional creation of majorityminority districts, without more,
always gives rise to an equal protection claim. Pp. 642-649.
(c) The classification of citizens by race threatens special
harms that are not present in this Court's vote-dilution cases and
thus warrants an analysis different from that used in assessing the
validity of atlarge and multimember gerrymandering schemes. In
addition, nothing in the Court's decisions compels the conclusion
that racial and political gerrymanders are subject to the same
constitutional scrutiny; in fact, this country's long and
persistent history of racial discrimination in voting and the
Court's Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence would seem to compel the
opposite conclusion. Nor is there any support for the
632
Syllabus
argument that racial gerrymandering poses no constitutional
difficulties when the lines drawn favor the minority, since equal
protection analysis is not dependent on the race of those burdened
or benefited by a particular classification,
Richmond v.
J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469,494
(plurality opinion). Finally, the highly fractured decision in
UJO does not foreclose the claim recognized here, which is
analytically distinct from the vote-dilution claim made there. Pp.
649-652.
2. If, on remand, the allegations of a racial gerrymander are
not contradicted, the District Court must determine whether the
plan is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental
interest. A covered jurisdiction's interest in creating
majority-minority districts in order to comply with the
nonretrogression rule under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act does not
give it
carte blanche to engage in racial gerrymandering.
The parties' arguments about whether the plan was necessary to
avoid dilution of black voting strength in violation of § 2 of the
Act and whether the State's interpretation of § 2 is
unconstitutional were not developed below, and the issues remain
open for consideration on remand. It is also unnecessary to decide
at this stage of the litigation whether the plan advances a state
interest distinct from the Act: eradicating the effects of past
racial discrimination. Although the State argues that it had a
strong basis for concluding that remedial action was warranted,
only three Justices in
UJO were prepared to say that States
have a significant interest in minimizing the consequences of
racial bloc voting apart from the Act's requirements and without
regard for sound districting principles. Pp. 653-657.
3. The Court expresses no view on whether appellants
successfully could have challenged a district such as that
suggested by the Attorney General or whether their complaint stated
a claim under other constitutional provisions. Pp. 657-658.
808 F. Supp. 461, reversed and remanded.
O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
REHNQUIST, C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined.
WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BLACKMUN and
STEVENS, JJ., joined,
post, p. 658. BLACKMUN, J.,
post, p. 676, STEVENS, J.,
post, p. 676, and SOUTER,
J.,
post, p. 679, filed dissenting opinions.
Robinson O.
Everett argued the cause for
appellants.
With him on the briefs was
Jeffrey B. Parsons.
H. Jefferson Powell argued the cause for state
appellees.
With him on the briefs were
Michael F. Easley, Attorney
General of North Carolina,
Edwin M. Speas, Jr., Senior
633
Deputy Attorney General, and Norma S. Harrell and Tiare B.
Smiley, Special Deputy Attorneys General. Edwin S. Kneedler argued
the cause for federal appellees. On the brief were Acting Solicitor
General Bryson, Acting Assistant Attorney General Turner, Thomas G.
Hungar, and Jessica Dunsay Silver.
*
JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. This case
involves two of the most complex and sensitive issues this Court
has faced in recent years: the meaning of the constitutional
"right" to vote, and the propriety of racebased state legislation
designed to benefit members of historically disadvantaged racial
minority groups. As a result of the 1990 census, North Carolina
became entitled to a 12th seat in the United States House of
Representatives. The General Assembly enacted a reapportionment
plan that included one majority-black congressional district. After
the Attorney General of the United States objected to the plan
pursuant to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as
amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, the General Assembly passed new
legislation creating a second majority-black district. Appellants
allege that the revised plan, which contains district boundary
lines of dramatically irregular shape, consti-
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the American Jewish Congress by
Marc D. Stern and
Lois C.
Waldman; for the Republican National
Committee by
Benjamin L. Ginsberg and
Michael A.
Hess; and for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by
Daniel J. Popeo and
Richard A.
Samp.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the
Democratic National Committee et al. by Wayne R. Arden and Jeffrey
M. Wice; for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law et
al. by Herbert Wachtell, William H. Brown III, Thomas
J.
Henderson, Frank R. Parker, Brenda Wright, Nicholas DeB.
Katzenbach, Michael R. Cole, Alan E. Kraus, Laughlin McDonald,
Kathy Wilde, E. Richard Larson, and Dennis Courtland Hayes; for the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., by Elaine R. Jones,
Charles Stephen Ralston, and Dayna L. Cunningham; and for Bolley
Johnson et al. by Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Scott A. Sinder, Kevin
X. Crowley, and James A. Peters.
634
tutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The question
before us is whether appellants have stated a cognizable claim.
I
The voting age population of North Carolina is approximately 78%
white, 20% black, and 1% Native American; the remaining 1% is
predominantly Asian. App. to Brief for Federal Appellees 16a. The
black population is relatively dispersed; blacks constitute a
majority of the general population in only 5 of the State's 100
counties. Brief for Appellants 57. Geographically, the State
divides into three regions: the eastern Coastal Plain, the central
Piedmont Plateau, and the western mountains. H. Lefler & A.
Newsom, The History of a Southern State: North Carolina 18-22 (3d
ed. 1973). The largest concentrations of black citizens live in the
Coastal Plain, primarily in the northern part. O. Gade & H.
Stillwell, North Carolina: People and Environments 65-68 (1986).
The General Assembly's first redistricting plan contained one
majority-black district centered in that area of the State.
Forty of North Carolina's one hundred counties are covered by §
5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, which
prohibits a jurisdiction subject to its provisions from
implementing changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with
respect to voting" without federal authorization,
ibid. The
jurisdiction must obtain either a judgment from the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia declaring that the
proposed change "does not have the purpose and will not have the
effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race
or color" or administrative preclearance from the Attorney General.
Ibid. Because the General Assembly's reapportionment plan
affected the covered counties, the parties agree that § 5 applied.
Tr. of Oral Arg. 14, 27-29. The State chose to submit its plan to
the Attorney General for preclearance.
635
The Attorney General, acting through the Assistant Attorney
General for the Civil Rights Division, interposed a formal
objection to the General Assembly's plan. The Attorney General
specifically objected to the configuration of boundary lines drawn
in the south-central to southeastern region of the State. In the
Attorney General's view, the General Assembly could have created a
second majorityminority district "to give effect to black and
Native American voting strength in this area" by using boundary
lines "no more irregular than [those] found elsewhere in the
proposed plan," but failed to do so for "pretextual reasons." See
App. to Brief for Federal Appellees lOa-lla.
Under § 5, the State remained free to seek a declaratory
judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia
notwithstanding the Attorney General's objection. It did not do so.
Instead, the General Assembly enacted a revised redistricting plan,
1991 N. C. Extra Sess. Laws, ch. 7, that included a second
majority-black district. The General Assembly located the second
district not in the south-central to southeastern part of the
State, but in the north-central region along Interstate 85. See
Appendix,
infra.
The first of the two majority-black districts contained in the
revised plan, District 1, is somewhat hook shaped. Centered in the
northeast portion of the State, it moves southward until it tapers
to a narrow band; then, with finger-like extensions, it reaches far
into the southernmost part of the State near the South Carolina
border. District 1 has been compared to a "Rorschach ink-blot
test,"
Shaw v.
Barr, 808 F. Supp. 461, 476 (EDNC
1992) (Voorhees, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part),
and a "bug splattered on a windshield," Wall Street Journal, Feb.
4, 1992, p. A14.
The second majority-black district, District 12, is even more
unusually shaped. It is approximately 160 miles long and, for much
of its length, no wider than the 1-85 corridor. It winds in
snakelike fashion through tobacco country, financial centers, and
manufacturing areas "until it gobbles in
636
enough enclaves of black neighborhoods." 808 F. Supp., at
476-477 (Voorhees, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part). Northbound and southbound drivers on 1-85 sometimes find
themselves in separate districts in one county, only to "trade"
districts when they enter the next county. Of the 10 counties
through which District 12 passes, 5 are cut into 3 different
districts; even towns are divided. At one point the district
remains contiguous only because it intersects at a single point
with two other districts before crossing over them. See Brief for
Republican National Committee as
Amicus Curiae 14-15. One
state legislator has remarked that" '[i]f you drove down the
interstate with both car doors open, you'd kill most of the people
in the district.'" Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1993, p. A4. The
district even has inspired poetry: "Ask not for whom the line is
drawn; it is drawn to avoid thee." Grofman, Would Vince Lombardi
Have Been Right If He Had Said: "When It Comes to Redistricting,
Race Isn't Everything, It's the
Only Thing"?, 14 Cardozo L.
Rev. 1237, 1261, n. 96 (1993) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
The Attorney General did not object to the General Assembly's
revised plan. But numerous North Carolinians did. The North
Carolina Republican Party and individual voters brought suit in
Federal District Court, alleging that the plan constituted an
unconstitutional political gerrymander under
Davis v.
Bandemer, 478
U. S. 109 (1986). That claim was dismissed, see
Pope v.
Blue, 809 F. Supp. 392 (WDNC), and this Court summarily
affirmed, 506 U. S. 801 (1992).
Shortly after the complaint in
Pope v.
Blue was
filed, appellants instituted the present action in the United
States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Appellants alleged not that the revised plan constituted a
political gerrymander, nor that it violated the "one person, one
vote" principle, see
Reynolds v.
Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 558
(1964), but that the State had created an unconstitutional
racial gerrymander. Appellants are five residents of
Dur-
637
ham County, North Carolina, all registered to vote in that
county. Under the General Assembly's plan, two will vote for
congressional representatives in District 12 and three will vote in
neighboring District 2. Appellants sued the Governor of North
Carolina, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the
Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, and members
of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (state appellees),
together with two federal officials, the Attorney General and the
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division (federal
appellees).
Appellants contended that the General Assembly's revised
reapportionment plan violated several provisions of the United
States Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment. They
alleged that the General Assembly deliberately "create[d] two
Congressional Districts in which a majority of black voters was
concentrated arbitrarily-without regard to any other
considerations, such as compactness, contiguousness, geographical
boundaries, or political subdivisions" with the purpose "to create
Congressional Districts along racial lines" and to assure the
election of two black representatives to Congress. App. to Juris.
Statement 102a. Appellants sought declaratory and injunctive relief
against the state appellees. They sought similar relief against the
federal appellees, arguing, alternatively, that the federal
appellees had misconstrued the Voting Rights Act or that the Act
itself was unconstitutional.
The three-judge District Court granted the federal appellees'
motion to dismiss. 808 F. Supp. 461 (EDNC 1992). The court agreed
unanimously that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction by reason of
§ 14(b) of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. §
1973l(b),
which vests the District Court for the District of Columbia with
exclusive jurisdiction to issue injunctions against the execution
of the Act and to enjoin actions taken by federal officers pursuant
thereto. 808 F. Supp., at 466-467;
id., at 474 (Voorhees, C.
J., concurring
638
in relevant part). Two judges also concluded that, to the extent
appellants challenged the Attorney General's preclearance
decisions, their claim was foreclosed by this Court's holding in
Morris v.
Gressette, 432 U. S. 491 (1977). 808
F. Supp., at 467.
By a 2-to-1 vote, the District Court also dismissed the
complaint against the state appellees. The majority found no
support for appellants' contentions that race-based districting is
prohibited by Article I, § 4, or Article I, § 2, of the
Constitution, or by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. It deemed appellants' claim under the
Fifteenth Amendment essentially subsumed within their related claim
under the Equal Protection Clause. 808 F. Supp., at 468-469. That
claim, the majority concluded, was barred by
United Jewish
Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v.
Carey, 430 U. S. 144 (1977)
(UJO).
The majority first took judicial notice of a fact omitted from
appellants' complaint: that appellants are white. It rejected the
argument that race-conscious redistricting to benefit minority
voters is
per se unconstitutional. The majority also
rejected appellants' claim that North Carolina's reapportionment
plan was impermissible. The majority read
UJO to stand for
the proposition that a redistricting scheme violates white voters'
rights only if it is "adopted with the purpose and effect of
discriminating against white voters ... on account of their race."
808 F. Supp., at 472. The purposes of favoring minority voters and
complying with the Voting Rights Act are not discriminatory in the
constitutional sense, the court reasoned, and majority-minority
districts have an impermissibly discriminatory effect only when
they unfairly dilute or cancel out white voting strength. Because
the State's purpose here was to comply with the Voting Rights Act,
and because the General Assembly's plan did not lead to
proportional underrepresentation of white voters state-
639
wide, the majority concluded that appellants had failed to state
an equal protection claim.
Id., at 472-473.
Chief Judge Voorhees agreed that race-conscious redistricting is
not
per se unconstitutional but dissented from the rest of
the majority's equal protection analysis. 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. 808 F. Supp., at 475-477 (opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part). North Carolina's
failure to respect these principles, in Judge Voorhees' view,
"augur[ed] a constitutionally suspect, and potentially unlawful,
intent" sufficient to defeat the state appellees' motion to
dismiss.
Id., at 477.
We noted probable jurisdiction. 506 U. S. 1019 (1992).
II A
"The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is
of the essence of a democratic society .... "
Reynolds v.
Sims, 377 U. S., at 555. For much of our Nation's history,
that right sadly has been denied to many because of race. The
Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870 after a bloody Civil War,
promised unequivocally that "[t]he right of citizens of the United
States to vote" no longer would be "denied or abridged ... by any
State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude." U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, § 1.
But "[a] number of states ... refused to take no for an answer
and continued to circumvent the fifteenth amendment's prohibition
through the use of both subtle and blunt instruments, perpetuating
ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination." Blumstein,
Defining and Proving Race Discrimination: Perspectives on the
Purpose V s. Results Approach from the Voting Rights Act, 69 Va. L.
Rev. 633, 637 (1983). Ostensibly race-neutral devices such as
literacy tests with "grandfather" clauses and "good character"
provisos were devised to deprive black voters of the franchise.
640
Another of the weapons in the States' arsenal was the racial
gerrymander-"the deliberate and arbitrary distortion of district
boundaries ... for [racial] purposes."
Bandemer, 478 U. S.,
at 164 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part)
(internal quotation marks omitted). In the 1870's, for example,
opponents of Reconstruction in Mississippi "concentrated the bulk
of the black population in a 'shoestring' Congressional district
running the length of the Mississippi River, leaving five others
with white majorities." E. Foner, Reconstruction: America's
Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, p. 590 (1988). Some 90 years
later, Alabama redefined the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee
"from a square to an uncouth twenty-eight-sided figure" in a manner
that was alleged to exclude black voters, and only black voters,
from the city limits.
Gomillion v.
Lightfoot,
364 U. S. 339,
340 (1960).
Alabama's exercise in geometry was but one example of the racial
discrimination in voting that persisted in parts of this country
nearly a century after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. See
South Carolina v.
Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309-313
(1966). In some States, registration of eligible black voters ran
50% behind that of whites.
Id., at 313. Congress enacted the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a dramatic and severe response to the
situation. The Act proved immediately successful in ensuring racial
minorities access to the voting booth; by the early 1970's, the
spread between black and white registration in several of the
targeted Southern States had fallen to well below 10%. A.
Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority
Voting Rights 44 (1987).
But it soon became apparent that guaranteeing equal access to
the polls would not suffice to root out other racially
discriminatory voting practices. Drawing on the "one person, one
vote" principle, this Court recognized that "[t]he right to vote
can be affected by a
dilution of voting power as well as by
an absolute prohibition on casting a ballot."
641
Allen v.
State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 569 (1969)
(emphasis added). Where members of a racial minority group vote as
a cohesive unit, practices such as multimember or atlarge electoral
systems can reduce or nullify minority voters' ability, as a group,
"to elect the candidate of their choice."
Ibid. Accordingly,
the Court held that such schemes violate the Fourteenth Amendment
when they are adopted with a discriminatory purpose and have the
effect of diluting minority voting strength. See,
e. g.,
Rogers v.
Lodge, 458 U. S. 613, 616-617
(1982);
White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755, 765-766
(1973). Congress, too, responded to the problem of vote dilution.
In 1982, it amended § 2 of the Voting Rights Act to prohibit
legislation that
results in the dilution of a minority
group's voting strength, regardless of the legislature's intent. 42
U. S. C. § 1973; see
Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986)
(applying amended § 2 to vote-dilution claim involving multimember
districts); see also
Voinovich v.
Quilter, 507 U. S.
146, 155 (1993) (single-member districts).
B
It is against this background that we confront the questions
presented here. In our view, the District Court properly dismissed
appellants' claims against the federal appellees. Our focus is on
appellants' claim that the State engaged in unconstitutional racial
gerrymandering. That argument strikes a powerful historical chord:
It is unsettling how closely the North Carolina plan resembles the
most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past.
An understanding of the nature of appellants' claim is critical
to our resolution of the case. In their complaint, appellants did
not claim that the General Assembly's reapportionment plan
unconstitutionally "diluted" white voting strength. They did not
even claim to be white. Rather, appellants' complaint alleged that
the deliberate segregation of voters into separate districts on the
basis of race violated their constitutional right to participate in
a "color-blind"
642
electoral process. Complaint' 29, App. to Juris. Statement
89a-90a; see also Brief for Appellants 31-32.
Despite their invocation of the ideal of a "color-blind"
Constitution, see
Plessy v.
Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896)
(Harlan, J., dissenting), appellants appear to concede that
race-conscious redistricting is not always unconstitutional. See
Tr. of Oral Arg. 16-19. That concession is wise: This Court never
has held that race-conscious state decisionmaking is impermissible
in
all circumstances. What appellants object to is
redistricting legislation that is so extremely irregular on its
face that it rationally can be viewed only as an effort to
segregate the races for purposes of voting, without regard for
traditional districting principles and without sufficiently
compelling justification. For the reasons that follow, we conclude
that appellants have stated a claim upon which relief can be
granted under the Equal Protection Clause. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc.
12(b)(6).
III A
The Equal Protection Clause provides that "[n]o State shall ...
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws." U. S. Const., Arndt. 14, § 1. Its central purpose is to
prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between
individuals on the basis of race.
Washington v.
Davis, 426 U.
S. 229, 239 (1976). Laws that explicitly distinguish between
individuals on racial grounds fall within the core of that
prohibition.
No inquiry into legislative purpose is necessary when the racial
classification appears on the face of the statute. See
Personnel
Administrator of Mass. v.
Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 272
(1979). Accord,
Washington v.
Seattle School Dist.
No.1,
458 U. S.
457, 485 (1982). Express racial classifications are immediately
suspect because, "[a]bsent searching judicial inquiry ... , there
is simply no way of determining what classifications are 'benign'
or 'remedial' and what classi-
643
fications are in fact motivated by illegitimate notions of
racial inferiority or simple racial politics."
Richmond v.
J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 493 (1989)
(plurality opinion);
id., at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring in
judgment); see also
UJO, 430 U. S., at 172 (Brennan, J.,
concurring in part) ("[A] purportedly preferential race assignment
may in fact disguise a policy that perpetuates disadvantageous
treatment of the plan's supposed beneficiaries").
Classifications of citizens solely on the basis of race "are by
their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are
founded upon the doctrine of equality."
Hirabayas hi v.
United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943).
Accord,
Loving v.
Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 11 (1967).
They threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their
membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility.
Croson, supra, at 493 (plurality opinion);
UJO,
supra, at 173 (Brennan, J., concurring in part) ("[E]ven in the
pursuit of remedial objectives, an explicit policy of assignment by
race may serve to stimulate our society's latent race
consciousness, suggesting the utility and propriety of basing
decisions on a factor that ideally bears no relationship to an
individual's worth or needs"). Accordingly, we have held that the
Fourteenth Amendment requires state legislation that expressly
distinguishes among citizens because of their race to be narrowly
tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. See,
e.
g., Wygant v.
Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 277278
(1986) (plurality opinion);
id., at 285 (O'CONNOR, J.,
concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
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."
Arlington Heights v.
Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 266
(1977). As we explained in
Feeney:
"A racial classification, regardless of purported motivation, is
presumptively invalid and can be upheld only
644
upon an extraordinary justification.
Brown v.
Board of
Education, 347 U.
S. 483;
McLaughlin v.
Florida, 379 U. S. 184.
This rule applies as well to a classification that is ostensibly
neutral but is an obvious pretext for racial discrimination.
Yick Wo v.
Hopkins, 118 U. S.
356; Guinn v.
United States, 238 U. S. 347; cf.
Lane v.
Wilson, 307 U. S. 268;
Gomillion v.
Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339." 442 U.
S., at 272.
B
Appellants contend that redistricting legislation that is so
bizarre on its face that it is "unexplainable on grounds other than
race,"
Arlington Heights, supra, at 266, demands the same
close scrutiny that we give other state laws that classify citizens
by race. Our voting rights precedents support that conclusion.
In
Guinn v.
United States, 238 U. S. 347 (1915), the
Court invalidated under the Fifteenth Amendment a statute that
imposed a literacy requirement on voters but contained a
"grandfather clause" applicable to individuals and their lineal
descendants entitled to vote "on [or prior to] January 1,
1866."
Id., at 357 (internal quotation marks omitted). The
determinative consideration for the Court was that the law, though
ostensibly race neutral, on its face "embod[ied] no exercise of
judgment and rest[ed] upon no discernible reason" other than to
circumvent the prohibitions of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Id.,
at 363. In other words, the statute was invalid because, on its
face, it could not be explained on grounds other than race.
The Court applied the same reasoning to the "uncouth
twenty-eight-sided" municipal boundary line at issue in
Gomillion. Although the statute that redrew the city limits
of Tuskegee was race neutral on its face, plaintiffs alleged that
its effect was impermissibly to remove from the city virtually all
black voters and no white voters. The Court reasoned:
645
"If these allegations upon a trial remained uncontradicted or
unqualified, the conclusion would be irresistible, tantamount for
all practical purposes to a mathematical demonstration, that the
legislation is solely concerned with segregating white and colored
voters by fencing Negro citizens out of town so as to deprive them
of their pre-existing municipal vote." 364 U. S., at 341.
The majority resolved the case under the Fifteenth Amendment.
Id., at 342-348. Justice Whittaker, however, concluded that
the "unlawful segregation of races of citizens" into different
voting districts was cognizable under the Equal Protection Clause.
Id., at 349 (concurring opinion). This Court's subsequent
reliance on
Gomillion in other Fourteenth Amendment cases
suggests the correctness of Justice Whittaker's view. See,
e.
g., Feeney, supra, at 272;
Whitcomb v.
Chavis,
403 U. S. 124,
149 (1971); see also
Mobile v.
Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 86 (1980)
(STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment)
(Gomillion's holding
"is compelled by the Equal Protection Clause").
Gomillion
thus supports appellants' contention that district lines obviously
drawn for the purpose of separating voters by race require careful
scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause regardless of the
motivations underlying their adoption.
The Court extended the reasoning of
Gomillion to
congressional districting in
Wright v.
Rockefeller,
376 U. S. 52
(1964). At issue in
Wright were four districts contained in
a New York apportionment statute. The plaintiffs alleged that the
statute excluded nonwhites from one district and concentrated them
in the other three.
Id., at 53-54. Every Member of the Court
assumed that the plaintiffs' allegation that the statute
"segregate[d] eligible voters by race and place of origin" stated a
constitutional claim.
Id., at 56 (internal quotation marks
omitted);
id., at 58 (Harlan, J., concurring);
id.,
at 59-62 (Douglas, J., dissenting). The Justices disagreed only as
to whether the plaintiffs had carried their burden of proof at
trial. The dissenters thought the unusual
646
shape of the district lines could "be explained only in racial
terms."
Id., at 59. The majority, however, accepted the
District Court's finding that the plaintiffs had failed to
establish that the districts were in fact drawn on racial lines.
Although the boundary lines were somewhat irregular, the majority
reasoned, they were not so bizarre as to permit of no other
conclusion. Indeed, because most of the nonwhite voters lived
together in one area, it would have been difficult to construct
voting districts without concentrations of nonwhite voters.
Id., at 56-58.
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. A
reapportionment statute typically does not classify persons at all;
it classifies tracts of land, or addresses. Moreover, redistricting
differs from other kinds of state decisionmaking in that the
legislature always is
aware of race when it draws district
lines, just as it is aware of age, economic status, religious and
political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors.
That sort of race consciousness does not lead inevitably to
impermissible race discrimination. As
Wright demonstrates,
when members of a racial group live together in one community, a
reapportionment plan that concentrates members of the group in one
district and excludes them from others may reflect wholly
legitimate purposes. The district lines may be drawn, for example,
to provide for compact districts of contiguous territory, or to
maintain the integrity of political subdivisions. See
Reynolds, 377 U. S., at 578 (recognizing these as legitimate
state interests).
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. Moreover, it seems clear to us that
proof sometimes will not be difficult at all. In some exceptional
cases, a reapportionment plan may be so highly irregular that, on
its face, it rationally cannot be
647
understood as anything other than an effort to "segregat[e] ...
voters" on the basis of race.
Gomillion, supra, at 341.
Gomillion, in which a tortured municipal boundary line was
drawn to exclude black voters, was such a case. So, too, would be a
case in which a State concentrated a dispersed minority population
in a single district by disregarding traditional districting
principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for
political subdivisions. We emphasize that these criteria are
important not because they are constitutionally required-they are
not, cf.
Gaffney v.
Cummings, 412 U. S. 735, 752, n. 18
(1973)-but because they are objective factors that may serve to
defeat a claim that a district has been gerrymandered on racial
lines. Cf.
Karcher v.
Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 755 (1983)
(STEVENS, J., concurring) ("One need not use Justice Stewart's
classic definition of obscenity-'I know it when I see it' -as an
ultimate standard for judging the constitutionality of a
gerrymander to recognize that dramatically irregular shapes may
have sufficient probative force to call for an explanation"
(footnotes omitted)).
Put differently, we believe that reapportionment is one area in
which appearances do matter. A reapportionment plan that includes
in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who
are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political
boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but
the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to
political apartheid. It reinforces the perception that members of
the same racial group-regardless of their age, education, economic
status, or the community in which they live-think alike, share the
same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at
the polls. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as
impermissible racial stereotypes. 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
648
Clause" (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also
Edmonson v.
Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 630-631
(1991) ("If our society is to continue to progress as a multiracial
democracy, it must recognize that the automatic invocation of race
stereotypes retards that progress and causes continued hurt and
injury"). By perpetuating such notions, a racial gerrymander may
exacerbate the very patterns of racial bloc voting that
majority-minority districting is sometimes said to counteract.
The message that such districting sends to elected
representatives is equally pernicious. When a district obviously is
created solely to effectuate the perceived common interests of one
racial group, elected officials are more likely to believe that
their primary obligation is to represent only the members of that
group, rather than their constituency as a whole. This is
altogether antithetical to our system of representative democracy.
As Justice Douglas explained in his dissent in
Wright v.
Rockefeller nearly 30 years ago:
"Here the individual is important, not his race, his creed, or
his color. The principle of equality is at war with the notion that
District A must be represented by a Negro, as it is with the notion
that District B must be represented by a Caucasian, District C by a
Jew, District D by a Catholic, and so on .... That system, by
whatever name it is called, is a divisive force in a community,
emphasizing differences between candidates and voters that are
irrelevant in the constitutional sense ....
"When racial or religious lines are drawn by the State, the
multiracial, multireligious communities that our Constitution seeks
to weld together as one become separatist; antagonisms that relate
to race or to religion rather than to political issues are
generated; communities seek not the best representative but the
best racial or religious partisan. Since that system is at war
with
649
the democratic ideal, it should find no footing here." 376 U.
S., at 66-67.
For these reasons, we conclude that a plaintiff challenging a
reapportionment statute under the Equal Protection Clause may state
a claim by alleging that the legislation, though race neutral on
its face, rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an
effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of
race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification. It is
unnecessary for us to decide whether or how a reapportionment plan
that, on its face, can be explained in nonracial terms successfully
could be challenged. Thus, we express no view as to whether "the
intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more,"
always gives rise to an equal protection claim.
Post, at 668
(WHITE, J., dissenting). We hold only that, on the facts of this
case, appellants have stated a claim sufficient to defeat the state
appellees' motion to dismiss.
C
The dissenters consider the circumstances of this case
"functionally indistinguishable" from multimember districting and
at-large voting systems, which are loosely described as "other
varieties of gerrymandering."
Post, at 671 (WHITE, J.,
dissenting); see also
post, at 684 (SOUTER, J., dissenting).
We have considered the constitutionality of these practices in
other Fourteenth Amendment cases and have required plaintiffs to
demonstrate that the challenged practice has the purpose and effect
of diluting a racial group's voting strength. See,
e. g.,
Rogers v.
Lodge, 458 U. S. 613 (1982)
(at-large system);
Mobile v.
Bolden, 446 U. S. 55 (1980)
(same);
White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973)
(multimember districts);
Whitcomb v.
Chavis, 403 U. S. 124 (1971)
(same); see also
supra, at 640-641. At-large and multimember
schemes, however, do not classify voters on the basis of race.
Classifying citizens by race, as we have said, threatens spe-
650
cial harms that are not present in our vote-dilution cases. It
therefore warrants different analysis.
JUSTICE SOUTER apparently believes that racial gerrymandering is
harmless unless it dilutes a racial group's voting strength. See
post, at 684 (dissenting opinion). As we have explained,
however, reapportionment legislation that cannot be understood as
anything other than an effort to classify and separate voters by
race injures voters in other ways. It reinforces racial stereotypes
and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy
by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular
racial group rather than their constituency as a whole. See
supra, at 647-649. JUSTICE SOUTER does not adequately
explain why these harms are not cognizable under the Fourteenth
Amendment.
The dissenters make two other arguments that cannot be
reconciled with our precedents. First, they suggest that a racial
gerrymander of the sort alleged here is functionally equivalent to
gerrymanders for nonracial purposes, such as political
gerrymanders. See
post, at 679 (opinion of STEVENS, J.); see
also
post, at 662-663 (opinion of WHITE, J.). This Court has
held political gerrymanders to be justiciable under the Equal
Protection Clause. See
Davis v.
Bandemer, 478 U. S.,
at 118-127. But nothing in our case law compels the conclusion that
racial and political gerrymanders are subject to precisely the same
constitutional scrutiny. In fact, our country's long and persistent
history of racial discrimination in voting-as well as our
Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, which always has reserved the
strictest scrutiny for discrimination on the basis of race, see
supra, at 642-644-would seem to compel the opposite
conclusion.
Second, JUSTICE STEVENS argues that racial gerrymandering poses
no constitutional difficulties when district lines are drawn to
favor the minority, rather than the majority. See
post, at
678 (dissenting opinion). We have made clear, however, that equal
protection analysis "is not dependent
651
on the race of those burdened or benefited by a particular
classification."
Croson, 488 U. S., at 494 (plurality
opinion); see also
id., at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring in
judgment). Accord,
Wygant, 476 U. S., at 273 (plurality
opinion). Indeed, racial classifications receive close scrutiny
even when they may be said to burden or benefit the races equally.
See
Powers v.
Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991)
("It is axiomatic that racial classifications do not become
legitimate on the assumption that all persons suffer them in equal
degree").
Finally, nothing in the Court's highly fractured decision in
UJO-on which the District Court almost exclusively relied,
and which the dissenters evidently believe controls, see
post, at 664-667 (opinion of WHITE, J.);
post, at
684, and n. 6 (opinion of SOUTER, J.)-forecloses the claim we
recognize today.
UJO concerned New York's revision of a
reapportionment plan to include additional majority-minority
districts in response to the Attorney General's denial of
administrative preclearance under § 5. In that regard, it closely
resembles the present case. But the cases are critically different
in another way. The plaintiffs in
UJO-members of a Hasidic
community split between two districts under New York's revised
redistricting plan-did not allege that the plan, on its face, was
so highly irregular that it rationally could be understood only as
an effort to segregate voters by race. Indeed, the facts of the
case would not have supported such a claim. Three Justices approved
the New York statute, in part, precisely because it adhered to
traditional districting principles:
"[WJe think it ... permissible for a State, employing sound
districting principles such as compactness and population
equality, to attempt to prevent racial minorities from being
repeatedly outvoted by creating districts that will afford fair
representation to the members of those racial groups who are
sufficiently numerous and whose residential patterns afford the
opportunity of creating districts in which they will be in the
majority."
652
430 U. S., at 168 (opinion of WHITE, J., joined by STEVENS and
REHNQUIST, JJ.) (emphasis added).
As a majority of the Justices construed the complaint, the
UJO plaintiffs made a different claim: that the New York
plan impermissibly "diluted" their voting strength. 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. Three Justices rejected the plaintiffs' claim
on the grounds that the New York statute "represented no racial
slur or stigma with respect to whites or any other race" and left
white voters with better than proportional representation.
Id., at 165-166. Two others concluded that the statute did
not minimize or cancel out a minority group's voting strength and
that the State's intent to comply with the Voting Rights Act, as
interpreted by the Department of Justice, "foreclose[d] any finding
that [the State] acted with the invidious purpose of discriminating
against white voters."
Id., at 180 (Stewart, J., joined by
Powell, J., concurring in judgment).
The District Court below relied on these portions of
UJO
to reject appellants' claim. See 808 F. Supp., at 472-473. In our
view, the court used the wrong analysis.
UJO's framework
simply does not apply where, as here, a reapportionment plan is
alleged to be so irrational on its face that it immediately offends
principles of racial equality.
UJO set forth a standard
under which white voters can establish unconstitutional vote
dilution. But it did not purport to overrule
Gomillion or
Wright. Nothing in the decision precludes white voters (or
voters of any other race) from bringing the analytically distinct
claim that a reapportionment plan rationally cannot be understood
as anything other than an effort to segregate citizens into
separate voting districts on the basis of race without sufficient
justification. Because appellants here stated such a claim, the
District Court erred in dismissing their complaint.
653
IV
JUSTICE SOUTER contends that exacting scrutiny of racial
gerrymanders under the Fourteenth Amendment is inappropriate
because reapportionment "nearly always require[s] some
consideration of race for legitimate reasons."
Post, at 680
(dissenting opinion). "As long as members of racial groups have [a]
commonality of interest" and "racial bloc voting takes place," he
argues, "legislators will have to take race into account" in order
to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Ibid. JUSTICE SOUTER'S
reasoning is flawed.
Earlier this Term, we unanimously reaffirmed that racial bloc
voting and minority-group political cohesion never can be assumed,
but specifically must be proved in each case in order to establish
that a redistricting plan dilutes minority voting strength in
violation of § 2. See
Growe v.
Emison, 507 U. S. 25, 40-41 (1993)
("Unless these points are established, there neither has been a
wrong nor can be a remedy"). That racial bloc voting or minority
political cohesion may be found to exist in
some cases, of
course, is no reason to treat
all racial gerrymanders
differently from other kinds of racial classification. JUSTICE
SOUTER apparently views racial gerrymandering of the type presented
here as a special category of "benign" racial discrimination that
should be subject to relaxed judicial review. Cf.
post, at
684-685 (dissenting opinion). As we have said, however, the very
reason that the Equal Protection Clause demands strict scrutiny of
all racial classifications is because without it, a court cannot
determine whether or not the discrimination truly is "benign." See
supra, at 642-643. Thus, if appellants' allegations of a
racial gerrymander are not contradicted on remand, the District
Court must determine whether the General Assembly's reapportionment
plan satisfies strict scrutiny. We therefore consider what that
level of scrutiny requires in the reapportionment context.
The state appellees suggest that a covered jurisdiction may have
a compelling interest in creating majority-minority
654
districts in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The
States certainly have a very strong interest in complying with
federal antidiscrimination laws that are constitutionally valid as
interpreted and as applied. But in the context of a Fourteenth
Amendment challenge, courts must bear in mind the difference
between what the law permits and what it requires.
For example, on remand North Carolina might claim that it
adopted the revised plan in order to comply with the § 5
"nonretrogression" principle. Under that principle, a proposed
voting change cannot be precleared if it will lead to "a
retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to
their effective exercise of the electoral franchise."
Beer
v.
United States, 425 U. S. 130, 141
(1976). In
Beer, we held that a reapportionment plan that
created one majorityminority district where none existed before
passed muster under § 5 because it improved the position of racial
minorities.
Id., at 141-142; see also
Richmond v.
United States, 422 U. S. 358, 370-371
(1975) (annexation that reduces percentage of blacks in population
satisfies § 5 where postannexation districts "fairly reflect"
current black voting strength).
Although the Court concluded that the redistricting scheme at
issue in
Beer was nonretrogressive, it did not hold that the
plan, for that reason, was immune from constitutional challenge.
The Court expressly declined to reach that question. See 425 U. S.,
at 142, n. 14. Indeed, the Voting Rights Act and our case law make
clear that a reapportionment plan that satisfies § 5 still may be
enjoined as unconstitutional. See 42 U. S. C. § 1973c (neither a
declaratory judgment by the District Court for the District of
Columbia nor preclearance by the Attorney General "shall bar a
subsequent action to enjoin enforcement" of new voting practice);
Allen, 393 U. S., at 549-550 (after preclearance, "private
parties may enjoin the enforcement of the new enactment ... in
traditional suits attacking its constitutionality"). Thus,
655
we do not read
Beer or any of our other § 5 cases to give
covered jurisdictions
carte blanche to engage in racial
gerrymandering in the name of nonretrogression. A reapportionment
plan would not be narrowly tailored to the goal of avoiding
retrogression if the State went beyond what was reasonably
necessary to avoid retrogression. Our conclusion is supported by
the plurality opinion in
UJO, in which four Justices
determined that New York's creation of additional majority-minority
districts was constitutional because the plaintiffs had failed to
demonstrate that the State "did more than the Attorney General was
authorized to
require it to do under the nonretrogression
principle of
Beer." 430 U. S., at 162-163 (opinion of WHITE,
J., joined by Brennan, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ.) (emphasis
added).
Before us, the state appellees contend that the General
Assembly's revised plan was necessary not to prevent retrogression,
but to avoid dilution of black voting strength in violation of § 2,
as construed in
Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). In
Gingles the Court considered a multimember redistricting
plan for the North Carolina State Legislature. The Court held that
members of a racial minority group claiming § 2 vote dilution
through the use of multimember districts must prove three threshold
conditions: that the minority group "is sufficiently large and
geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member
district," that the minority group is "politically cohesive," and
that "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it
... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate."
Id., at 50-51. We have indicated that similar preconditions
apply in § 2 challenges to single-member districts. See
Voinovich v.
Quilter, 507 U. S., at 157-158;
Growe v.
Emison, 507 U. S., at 40.
Appellants maintain that the General Assembly's revised plan
could not have been required by § 2. They contend that the State's
black population is too dispersed to support two geographically
compact majority-black districts, as the bi-
656
zarre shape of District 12 demonstrates, and that there is no
evidence of black political cohesion. They also contend that recent
black electoral successes demonstrate the willingness of white
voters in North Carolina to vote for black candidates. Appellants
point out that blacks currently hold the positions of State
Auditor, Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives,
and chair of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. They also
point out that in 1990 a black candidate defeated a white opponent
in the Democratic Party runoff for a United States Senate seat
before being defeated narrowly by the Republican incumbent in the
general election. Appellants further argue that if § 2 did require
adoption of North Carolina's revised plan, § 2 is to that extent
unconstitutional. These arguments were not developed below, and the
issues remain open for consideration on remand.
The state appellees alternatively argue that the General
Assembly's plan advanced a compelling interest entirely distinct
from the Voting Rights Act. We previously have recognized a
significant state interest in eradicating the effects of past
racial discrimination. See,
e. g., Croson, 488 U. S., at
491-493 (opinion of O'CONNOR, J., joined by REHNQUIST, C. J., and
WHITE, J.);
id., at 518 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in part and
concurring in judgment);
Wygant, 476 U. S., at 280282
(plurality opinion);
id., at 286 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring
in part and concurring in judgment). But the State must have a
"'strong basis in evidence for [concluding] that remedial action
[is] necessary.'"
Croson, supra, at 500 (quoting
Wygant,
supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)).
The state appellees submit that two pieces of evidence gave the
General Assembly a strong basis for believing that remedial action
was warranted here: the Attorney General's imposition of the § 5
preclearance requirement on 40 North Carolina counties, and the
Gingles District Court's findings of a long history of
official racial discrimination in North Carolina's political system
and of pervasive racial bloc voting.
657
The state appellees assert that the deliberate creation of
majority-minority districts is the most precise way-indeed the only
effective way-to overcome the effects of racially polarized voting.
This question also need not be decided at this stage of the
litigation. We note, however, that only three Justices in
UJO were prepared to say that States have a significant
interest in minimizing the consequences of racial bloc voting apart
from the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. And those three
Justices specifically concluded that race-based districting, as a
response to racially polarized voting, is constitutionally
permissible only when the State "employ[s] sound districting
principles," and only when the affected racial group's "residential
patterns afford the opportunity of creating districts in which they
will be in the majority." 430 U. S., at 167-168 (opinion of WHITE,
J., joined by STEVENS and REHNQUIST, JJ.).
V
Racial classifications of any sort pose the risk of lasting harm
to our society. They reinforce the belief, held by too many for too
much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color
of their skin. Racial classifications with respect to voting carry
particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial
purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it
threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system
in which race no longer matters-a goal that the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to
aspire. It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our
state legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny.
In this case, the Attorney General suggested that North Carolina
could have created a reasonably compact second majority-minority
district in the south-central to southeastern part of the State. We
express no view as to whether appellants successfully could have
challenged such a district under the Fourteenth Amendment. We also
do not decide
658
whether appellants' complaint stated a claim under
constitutional provisions other than the Fourteenth Amendment.
Today we hold only that appellants have stated a claim under the
Equal Protection Clause by alleging that the North Carolina General
Assembly adopted a reapportionment scheme so irrational on its face
that it can be understood only as an effort to segregate voters
into separate voting districts because of their race, and that the
separation lacks sufficient justification. If the allegation of
racial gerrymandering remains uncontradicted, the District Court
further must determine whether the North Carolina plan is narrowly
tailored to further a compelling governmental interest.
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the District Court and
remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
[Appendix containing map of North Carolina Congressional Plan
follows this page.]
JUSTICE WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS
join, dissenting.
The facts of this case mirror those presented in
United
Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v.
Carey,
430 U. S. 144 (1977)
(UJO), where the Court rejected a
claim that creation of a majority-minority district violated the
Constitution, either as a
per se matter or in light of the
circumstances leading to the creation of such a district. Of
particular relevance, five of the Justices reasoned that members of
the white majority could not plausibly argue that their influence
over the political process had been unfairly canceled, see
id., at 165-168 (opinion of WHITE, J., joined by REHNQUIST
and STEVENS, JJ.), or that such had been the State's intent, see
id., at 179-180 (Stewart, J., joined by Powell, J.,
concurring in judgment). Accordingly, they held that plaintiffs
were not entitled to relief under the Constitution's
659
NORTH CAROLINA CONGRESSIONAL PLAN Chapter 7 of the 1991 Session
Laws (1991 Extra Session)
660
Equal Protection Clause. On the same reasoning, I would affirm
the District Court's dismissal of appellants' claim in this
instance.
The Court today chooses not to overrule, but rather to sidestep,
UJO. It does so by glossing over the striking similarities,
focusing on surface differences, most notably the (admittedly
unusual) shape of the newly created district, and imagining an
entirely new cause of action. Because the holding is limited to
such anomalous circumstances,
ante, at 649, it perhaps will
not substantially hamper a State's legitimate efforts to redistrict
in favor of racial minorities. Nonetheless, the notion that North
Carolina's plan, under which whites remain a voting majority in a
disproportionate number of congressional districts, and pursuant to
which the State has sent its
first black representatives
since Reconstruction to the United States Congress, might have
violated appellants' constitutional rights is both a fiction and a
departure from settled equal protection principles. Seeing no good
reason to engage in either, I dissent.
I A
The grounds for my disagreement with the majority are simply
stated: Appellants have not presented a cognizable claim, because
they have not alleged a cognizable injury. To date, we have held
that only two types of state voting practices could give rise to a
constitutional claim. The first involves direct and outright
deprivation of the right to vote, for example by means of a poll
tax or literacy test. See,
e. g., Guinn v.
United States, 238 U. S. 347 (1915).
Plainly, this variety is not implicated by appellants' allegations
and need not detain us further. The second type of unconstitutional
practice is that which "affects the political strength of various
groups,"
Mobile v.
Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 83 (1980)
(STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment), in violation of the Equal
Protection Clause. As for this latter category, we
661
have insisted that members of the political or racial group
demonstrate that the challenged action have the intent and effect
of unduly diminishing their influence on the political process.1
Although this severe burden has limited the number of successful
suits, it was adopted for sound reasons.
The central explanation has to do with the nature of the
redistricting process. As the majority recognizes, "redistricting
differs from other kinds of state decisionmaking in that the
legislature always is
aware of race when it draws district
lines, just as it is aware of age, economic status, religious and
political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors."
Ante, at 646 (emphasis in original). "Being aware," in this
context, is shorthand for "taking into account," and it hardly can
be doubted that legislators routinely engage in the business of
making electoral predictions based on group characteristics-racial,
ethnic, and the like.
"[L]ike bloc-voting by race, [the racial composition of
geographic area] too is a fact of life, well known to those
responsible for drawing electoral district lines. These lawmakers
are quite aware that the districts they create will have a white or
a black majority; and with each new district comes the unavoidable
choice as to the racial composition of the district." Beer
v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 144 (1976)
(WHITE, J., dissenting).
As we have said, "it requires no special genius to recognize the
political consequences of drawing a district line along one street
rather than another."
Gaffney v.
Cummings, 412
1 It has been argued that the required showing of discriminatory
effect should be lessened once a plaintiff successfully
demonstrates intentional discrimination. See
Garza v.
County of Los Angeles, 918 F.2d
763, 771
(CA9 1990). Although I would leave this
question for another day, I would note that even then courts have
insisted on
"some showing of injury ... to assure that the
district court can impose a meaningful remedy."
Ibid.
662
u. S. 735, 753 (1973); see also
Mobile v.
Bolden,
supra, at 86-87 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). Because
extirpating such considerations from the redistricting process is
unrealistic, the Court has not invalidated all plans that
consciously use race, but rather has looked at their impact.
Redistricting plans also reflect group interests and inevitably
are conceived with partisan aims in mind. To allow judicial
interference whenever this occurs would be to invite constant and
unmanageable intrusion. Moreover, a group's power to affect the
political process does not automatically dissipate by virtue of an
electoral loss. Accordingly, we have asked that an identifiable
group demonstrate more than mere lack of success at the polls to
make out a successful gerrymandering claim. See,
e. g.,
White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755, 765-766
(1973);
Whitcomb v.
Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 153-155
(1971).
With these considerations in mind, we have limited such claims
by insisting upon a showing that "the political processes ... were
not equally open to participation by the group in question-that its
members had less opportunity than did other residents in the
district to participate in the political processes and to elect
legislators of their choice."
White v.
Regester,
supra, at 766. Indeed, as a brief survey of decisions
illustrates, the Court's gerrymandering cases all carry this
theme-that it is not mere suffering at the polls but discrimination
in the polity with which the Constitution is concerned.
In
Whitcomb v.
Chavis, 403 U. S., at 149, we
searched in vain for evidence that black voters "had less
opportunity than did other ... residents to participate in the
political processes and to elect legislators of their choice." More
generally, we remarked:
"The mere fact that one interest group or another concerned with
the outcome of [the district's] elections has found itself outvoted
and without legislative seats of its
663
own provides no basis for invoking constitutional remedies where
... there is no indication that this segment of the population is
being denied access to the political system." Id., at
154-155.
Again, in
White v.
Regester, supra, the same
criteria were used to uphold the District Court's finding that a
redistricting plan was unconstitutional. The "historic and present
condition" of the Mexican-American community,
id., at 767, a
status of cultural and economic marginality,
id., at 768, as
well as the legislature's unresponsiveness to the group's
interests,
id., at 768-769, justified the conclusion that
MexicanAmericans were "'effectively removed from the political
processes,'" and "invidiously excluded ... from effective
participation in political life,"
id., at 769. Other
decisions of this Court adhere to the same standards. See
Rogers v.
Lodge, 458 U. S. 613, 624-626
(1982);
Chapman v.
Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 17 (1975)
(requiring proof that "the group has been denied access to the
political process equal to the access of other groups").2
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,
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. Section 2 also provides that a violation of that prohibition
"is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is
shown that the political processes leading to nomination or
election ... are not equally open to participation by members of a
[protected] class ... in that its members have less opportunity
than other members of the electorate to participate in the
political process and to elect representatives of their choice." 42
U. S. C. § 1973(b).
3 Although
Davis involved political groups, the
principles were expressly drawn from the Court's racial
gerrymandering cases. See 478 U. S., at 131, n. 12 (plurality
opinion).
664
the question in gerrymandering cases is "whether a particular
group has been unconstitutionally denied its chance to effectively
influence the political process,"
id., at 132-133. Thus, "an
equal protection violation may be found only where the electoral
system
substantially disadvantages certain voters in their
opportunity to influence the political process effectively."
Id., at 133 (emphasis added). By this, I meant that the group
must exhibit "strong indicia of lack of political power and the
denial of fair representation," so that it could be said that it
has "essentially been shut out of the political process."
Id., at 139. In short, even assuming that racial (or
political) factors were considered in the drawing of district
boundaries, a showing of discriminatory effects is a "threshold
requirement" in the absence of which there is no equal protection
violation,
id., at 143, and no need to "reach the question
of the state interests ... served by the particular districts,"
id., at 142.4
To distinguish a claim that alleges that the redistricting
scheme has discriminatory intent and effect from one that does not
has nothing to do with dividing racial classifications between the
"benign" and the malicious-an enterprise which, as the majority
notes, the Court has treated with skepticism. See
ante, at
642-643. Rather, the issue is whether the classification based on
race discriminates
4 Although disagreeing with the Court's holding in
Davis
that claims of political gerrymandering are justiciable, see
id., at 144 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment), the
author of today's opinion expressed views on racial gerrymandering
quite similar to my own:
"[W]here a racial minority group is characterized by 'the
traditional indicia of suspectness' and is vulnerable to exclusion
from the political process ... individual voters who belong to that
group enjoy some measure of protection against intentional dilution
of their group voting strength by means of racial gerrymandering
.... Even so,
the individual's right is infringed only if the
racial minority can prove that it has 'essentially been shut out of
the political process.''' Id., at 151-152 (emphasis added). As
explained below, that position cannot be squared with the one taken
by the majority in this case.
665
against
anyone by denying equal access to the political
process. Even Members of the Court least inclined to approve of
race-based remedial measures have acknowledged the significance of
this factor. See
Fullilove v.
Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448,524-525, n.
3 (1980) (Stewart, J., dissenting) ("No person in
[UJOJ was
deprived of his electoral franchise");
Regents of Univ. of
Gal. v.
Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 304-305
(1978) (Powell, J.)
("United Jewish Organizations ...
properly is viewed as a case in which the remedy for an
administrative finding of discrimination encompassed measures to
improve the previously disadvantaged group's ability to
participate,
without excluding individuals belonging to any
other group from enjoyment of the relevant opportunity-meaningful
participation in the electoral process") (emphasis added).
B
The most compelling evidence of the Court's position prior to
this day, for it is most directly on point, is
UJO, 430 U. S. 144 (1977). The
Court characterizes the decision as "highly fractured,"
ante, at 651, but that should not detract attention from the
rejection by a majority in
UJO of the claim that the State's
intentional creation of majority-minority districts transgressed
constitutional norms. As stated above, five Justices were of the
view that, absent any contention that the proposed plan was adopted
with the intent, or had the effect, of unduly minimizing the white
majority's voting strength, the Fourteenth Amendment was not
implicated. 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.
Nevertheless, there was no fencing out of the white population from
participation in the political processes of the county, and the
666
plan did not minimize or unfairly cancel out white voting
strength." 430 U. S., at 165.
In a similar vein, Justice Stewart was joined by Justice Powell
in stating:
"The petitioners have made no showing that a racial criterion
was used as a basis for denying them their right to vote, in
contravention of the Fifteenth Amendment. See Gomillion v.
Lightfoot, 364
U. S. 339. They have made no showing that the redistricting
scheme was employed as part of a 'contrivance to segregate'; to
minimize or cancel out the voting strength of a minority class or
interest; or otherwise to impair or burden the opportunity of
affected persons to participate in the political process."
Id., at 179 (opinion concurring in judgment) (some citations
omitted).
Under either formulation, it is irrefutable that appellants in
this proceeding likewise have failed to state a claim. As was the
case in New York, a number of North Carolina's political
subdivisions have interfered with black citizens' meaningful
exercise of the franchise and are therefore subject to §§4 and 5 of
the Voting Rights Act. Cf.
UJO, supra, at 148. In other
words, North Carolina was found by Congress to have" 'resorted to
the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various
kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in
the face of adverse federal court decrees'" and therefore "would be
likely to engage in 'similar maneuvers in the future in order to
evade the remedies for voting discrimination contained in the Act
itself.'"
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
667
the Attorney General's satisfaction that its proposed
redistricting had neither the purpose nor the effect of abridging
the right to vote on account of race or color. Cf.
UJO,
supra, at 150. The Attorney General's interposition of a § 5
objection "properly is viewed" as "an administrative finding of
discrimination" against a racial minority.
Regents of Univ. of
Gal. v.
Bakke, supra, at 305 (opinion of Powell, J.).
Finally, like New York, North Carolina reacted by modifying its
plan and creating additional majority-minority districts. Cf.
UJO, supra, at 151-152.
In light of this background, it strains credulity to suggest
that North Carolina's purpose in creating a second majorityminority
district was to discriminate against members of the majority group
by "impair[ing] or burden[ing their] opportunity ... to participate
in the political process."
Id., at 179 (Stewart, J.,
concurring in judgment). The State has made no mystery of its
intent, which was to respond to the Attorney General's objections,
see Brief for State Appellees 13-14, by improving the minority
group's prospects of electing a candidate of its choice. I doubt
that this constitutes a discriminatory purpose as defined in the
Court's equal protection cases-i.
e., an intent to aggravate
"the unequal distribution of electoral power."
Post, at 678
(STEVENS, J., dissenting). But even assuming that it does, there is
no question that appellants have not alleged the requisite
discriminatory effects. Whites constitute roughly 76% of the total
population and 79% of the voting age population in North Carolina.
Yet, under the State's plan, they still constitute a voting
majority in 10 (or 83%) of the 12 congressional districts. Though
they might be dissatisfied at the prospect of casting a vote for a
losing candidate-a lot shared by many, including a disproportionate
number of minor-
its black citizens with respect to their exercise of the voting
franchise from approximately 1900 to 1970 by employing a poll tax
[and] a literacy test."
668
ity voters-surely they cannot complain of discriminatory
treatment.6
II
The majority attempts to distinguish
UJO by imagining a
heretofore unknown type of constitutional claim. In its words,
"UJO set forth a standard under which white voters can
establish unconstitutional vote dilution .... Nothing in the
decision precludes white voters (or voters of any other race) from
bringing the analytically distinct claim that a reapportionment
plan rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an
effort to segregate citizens into separate voting districts on the
basis of race without sufficient justification."
Ante, at
652. There is no support for this distinction in
UJO, and no
authority in the cases relied on by the Court either. More
importantly, the majority's submission does not withstand analysis.
The logic of its theory appears to be that race-conscious
redistricting that "segregates" by drawing odd-shaped lines is
qualitatively different from race-conscious redistricting that
affects groups in some other way. The distinction is without
foundation.
A
The essence of the majority's argument is that
UJO dealt
with a claim of vote dilution-which required a specific showing of
harm-and that cases such as
Gomillion v.
Lightfoot,
364 U. S. 339
(1960), and
Wright v.
Rockefeller, 376 U. S. 52 (1964), dealt
with claims of racial segregation-which did not. I read these
decisions quite differently. Petitioners'
6 This is not to say that a group that has been afforded roughly
proportional representation
never can make out a claim of
unconstitutional discrimination. Such districting might have both
the intent and effect of "packing" members of the group so as to
deprive them of any influence in other districts. Again, however,
the equal protection inquiry should look at the group's overall
influence over, and treatment by, elected representatives and the
political process as a whole.
669
claim in
UJO was that the State had "violated the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by
deliberately revising its
reapportionment plan along racial lines." 430 U. S., at 155
(plurality opinion) (emphasis added). They also stated: "'Our
argument is ... that the history of the area demonstrates that
there could be-and in fact was-no
reason other than race to
divide the community at this time.'"
Id., at 154, n. 14
(quoting Brief for Petitioners, O. T. 1976, No. 75-104, p. 6, n. 6)
(emphasis in original). Nor was it ever in doubt that "the State
deliberately used race in a purposeful manner." 430 U. S., at 165.
In other words, the "analytically distinct claim" the majority
discovers today was in plain view and did not carry the day for
petitioners. 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. It was a function of the type of injury upon which
the Court insisted.
Gomillion is consistent with this view. To begin, the
Court's reliance on that case as the font of its novel type of
claim is curious. Justice Frankfurter characterized the complaint
as alleging a deprivation of the right to vote in violation of the
Fifteenth Amendment. See 364 U. S., at 341, 346. 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. But even
recast as a Fourteenth Amendment case,
Gomillion does not
assist the majority, for its focus was on the alleged
effect
of the city's action, which was to exclude black voters from the
municipality of Tuskegee. As the Court noted, the "inevitable
effect of this redefinition of Tuskegee's boundaries" was "to
deprive the Negro petitioners discriminatorily of the benefits of
residence in Tuskegee." 364 U. S., at 341. Even Justice Whit-
670
taker's concurrence appears to be premised on the notion that
black citizens were being "fenc[ed] out" of municipal benefits.
Id., at 349. Subsequent decisions of this Court have
similarly interpreted
Gomillion as turning on the
unconstitutional effect of the legislation. See
Palmer v.
Thompson, 403
U. S. 217, 225 (1971);
United States v.
O'Brien,
391 U. S. 367,
385 (1968). In
Gomillion, in short, the group that formed
the majority at the state level purportedly set out to manipulate
city boundaries in order to remove members of the minority, thereby
denying them valuable municipal services. No analogous purpose or
effect has been alleged in this case.
The only other case invoked by the majority is
Wright
v.
Rockefeller, supra. Wright involved a challenge to a
legislative plan that created four districts. In the 17th, 19th,
and 20th Districts, whites constituted respectively 94.9%, 71.5%,
and 72.5% of the population. 86.3% of the population in the 18th
District was classified as nonwhite or Puerto Rican. See
Wright v.
Rockefeller, 211 F. Supp. 460, 472 (SDNY
1962) (Murphy, J., dissenting); 376 U. S., at 54. The plaintiffs
alleged that the plan was drawn with the intent to segregate voters
on the basis of race, in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments.
Id., at 53-54. The Court affirmed the District
Court's dismissal of the complaint on the ground that plaintiffs
had not met their burden of proving discriminatory intent. See
id., at 55,58. I fail to see how a decision based on a
failure to establish discriminatory
intent can support the
inference that it is unnecessary to prove discriminatory
effect.
Wright is relevant only to the extent that it illustrates
a proposition with which I have no problem: that a complaint
stating that a plan has carved out districts on the basis of race
can, under certain circumstances, state a claim under the
Fourteenth Amendment. To that end, however, there must be an
allegation of discriminatory purpose and effect, for the
constitutionality of a race-conscious redistricting plan
671
depends on these twin elements. In
Wright, for example,
the facts might have supported the contention that the districts
were intended to, and did in fact, shield the 17th District from
any minority influence and "pack" black and Puerto Rican voters in
the 18th, thereby invidiously minimizing their voting strength. In
other words, the purposeful creation of a majority-minority
district could have discriminatory effect if it is achieved by
means of "packing"-i.
e., overconcentration of minority
voters. In the present case, the facts could sustain no such
allegation.
B
Lacking support in any of the Court's precedents, the majority's
novel type of claim also makes no sense. As I understand the theory
that is put forth, a redistricting plan that uses race to
"segregate" voters by drawing "uncouth" lines is harmful in a way
that a plan that uses race to distribute voters differently is not,
for the former "bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political
apartheid." See
ante, at 647. The distinction is
untenable.
Racial gerrymanders come in various shades: At-large voting
schemes, see,
e. g., White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973); the
fragmentation of a minority group among various districts "so that
it is a majority in none,"
Voinovich v.
Quilter,
507 U. S. 146,
153 (1993), otherwise known as "cracking," cf.
Connor v.
Finch, 431 U.
S. 407, 422 (1977); the "stacking" of "a large minority
population concentration ... with a larger white population,"
Parker, Racial Gerrymandering and Legislative Reapportionment, in
Minority Vote Dilution 85, 92 (C. Davidson ed. 1984); and, finally,
the "concentration of [minority voters] into districts where they
constitute an excessive majority,"
Thornburg v.
Gingles,
478 U. S. 30, 46, n. 11 (1986), also called "packing,"
Voinovich, supra, at 153. In each instance, race is
consciously utilized by the legislature for electoral purposes; in
each instance, we have put the plaintiff challenging the district
lines to the
672
burden of demonstrating that the plan was meant to, and did in
fact, exclude an identifiable racial group from participation in
the political process.
Not so, apparently, when the districting "segregates" by drawing
odd-shaped lines.7 In that case, we are told, such proof no longer
is needed. Instead, it is the
State that must rebut the
allegation that race was taken into account, a fact that, together
with the legislators' consideration of ethnic, religious, and other
group characteristics, I had thought we practically took for
granted, see
supra, at 660. Part of the explanation for the
majority's approach has to do, perhaps, with the emotions stirred
by words such as "segregation" and "political apartheid." But their
loose and imprecise use by today's majority has, I fear, led it
astray. See n. 7,
supra. The consideration of race in
"segregation" cases is no different than in other race-conscious
districting; from the standpoint of the affected groups, moreover,
the line-drawings all act in similar fashion.8 A plan that
"segregates" being functionally indistinguishable from any of the
other varieties of gerrymandering, we should be consistent in what
we require from a claimant: proof of discriminatory purpose and
effect.
The other part of the majority's explanation of its holding is
related to its simultaneous discomfort and fascination with
irregularly shaped districts. Lack of compactness or contiguity,
like uncouth district lines, certainly is a helpful
7 I borrow the term "segregate" from the majority, but, given
its historical connotation, believe that its use is ill advised.
Nor is it a particularly accurate description of what has occurred.
The majority-minority district that is at the center of the
controversy is, according to the State, 54.71% Mrican-American.
Brief for State Appellees 5, n. 6. Even if racial distribution was
a factor, no racial group can be said to have been "segregated"-i.
e., "set apart" or "isolate[d]." Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary 1063 (9th ed. 1983).
8The black plaintiffs in
Gomillion v.
Lightfoot,
364 U. S. 339
(1960), I am confident, would have suffered equally had whites in
Tuskegee sought to maintain their control by annexing predominantly
white suburbs, rather than splitting the municipality in two.
673
indicator that some form of gerrymandering (racial or other)
might have taken place and that "something may be amiss."
Karcher v.
Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 758 (1983)
(STEVENS, J., concurring). Cf.
Connor, supra, at 425.
Disregard for geographic divisions and compactness often goes hand
in hand with partisan gerrymandering. See
Karcher, supra, at
776 (WHITE, J., dissenting);
Wells v.
Rockefeller,
394 U. S. 542,
554 (1969) (WHITE, J., dissenting).
But while district irregularities may provide strong indicia of
a potential gerrymander, they do no more than that. In particular,
they have no bearing on whether the plan ultimately is found to
violate the Constitution. Given two districts drawn on similar,
race-based grounds, the one does not become more injurious than the
other simply by virtue of being snakelike, at least so far as the
Constitution is concerned and absent any evidence of differential
racial impact. The majority's contrary view is perplexing in light
of its concession that "compactness or attractiveness has never
been held to constitute an independent federal constitutional
requirement for state legislative districts."
Gaffney, 412
U. S., at 752, n. 18; see
ante, at 647. It is shortsighted
as well, for a regularly shaped district can just as effectively
effectuate racially discriminatory gerrymandering as an odd-shaped
one.9 By focusing on looks rather than impact, the majority
"immediately casts attention in the wrong direction-toward
superficialities of shape and size, rather than toward the
political realities of district composition." R. Dixon, Democratic
Representation: Reapportionment in Law and Politics 459 (1968).
9 As has been remarked, "[d]ragons, bacon strips, dumbbells and
other strained shapes are not always reliable signs that partisan
(or racial or ethnic or factional) interests are being served,
while the most regularly drawn district may turn out to have been
skillfully constructed with an intent to aid one party." Sickels,
Dragons, Bacon Strips, and Dumbbells-Who's Afraid of
Reapportionment?, 75 Yale L. J. 1300 (1966).
674
Limited by its own terms to cases involving unusually shaped
districts, the Court's approach nonetheless will unnecessarily
hinder to some extent a State's voluntary effort to ensure a
modicum of minority representation. This will be true in areas
where the minority population is geographically dispersed. It also
will be true where the minority population is not scattered but,
for reasons unrelated to racefor example incumbency protection-the
State would rather not create the majority-minority district in its
most "obvious" location.10 When, as is the case here, the creation
of
10 This appears to be what has occurred in this instance. In
providing the reasons for the objection, the Attorney General noted
that "[f]or the south-central to southeast area, there were several
plans drawn providing for a second majority-minority congressional
district" and that such a district would have been no more
irregular than others in the State's plan. See App. to Brief for
Federal Appellees lOa. North Carolina's decision to create a
majority-minority district can be explained as an attempt to meet
this objection. 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.
Indeed, in a suit brought prior to this one, different plaintiffs
charged that District 12 was "grossly contorted" and had "no
logical explanation other than incumbency protection and the
enhancement of Democratic partisan interests .... The plan ...
ignores the directive of the [Department of Justice] to create a
minority district in the southeastern portion of North Carolina
since any such district would jeopardize the reelection of ... the
Democratic incumbent." App. to Juris. Statement, O. T. 1991, No.
91-2038, p. 43a (Complaint in
Pope v.
Blue, No.
3:92CV71-P (WDNC)). With respect to this incident, one writer has
observed that "understanding why the configurations are shaped as
they are requires us to know at least as much about the interests
of incumbent Democratic politicians, as it does knowledge of the
Voting Rights Act." Grofman, Would Vince Lombardi Have Been Right
If He Had Said: ''When It Comes to Redistricting, Race Isn't
Everything, It's the
Only Thing"?, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1237,
1258 (1993). The District Court in
Pope dismissed
appellants' claim, reasoning in part that "plaintiffs do not
allege, nor can they, that the state's redistricting plan has
caused them to be 'shut out of the political process.'''
Pope v.
Blue, 809 F. Supp. 392, 397 (WDNC 1992). We
summarily affirmed that decision. 506 U. S. 801 (1992).
675
a majority-minority district does not unfairly minimize the
voting power of any other group, the Constitution does not justify,
much less mandate, such obstruction. We said as much in
Gaffney:
"[C]ourts have [no] constitutional warrant to invalidate a state
plan, otherwise within tolerable population limits, because it
undertakes, not to minimize or eliminate the political strength of
any group or party, but to recognize it and, through districting,
provide a rough sort of proportional representation in the
legislative halls of the State." 412 U. S., at 754.
III
Although I disagree with the holding that appellants' claim is
cognizable, the Court's discussion of the level of scrutiny it
requires warrants a few comments. I have no doubt that a State's
compliance with the Voting Rights Act clearly constitutes a
compelling interest. Cf.
UJO, 430 U. S., at 162165 (opinion
of WHITE, J.);
id., at 175-179 (Brennan, J., concurring in
part);
id., at 180 (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment).
Here, the Attorney General objected to the State's plan on the
ground that it failed to draw a second majority-minority district
for what appeared to be pretextual reasons. Rather than challenge
this conclusion, North Carolina chose to draw the second district.
As
UJO held, a State is entitled to take such action. See
also
Wygant v.
Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 291
(O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
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.
Ante, at
658. It is evident to me, however, that what North Carolina did was
precisely tailored to meet the objection of the Attorney General to
its prior plan. Hence, I see no need
676
for a remand at all, even accepting the majority's basic
approach to this case.
Furthermore, how it intends to manage this standard, I do not
know. Is it more "narrowly tailored" to create an irregular
majority-minority district as opposed to one that is compact but
harms other state interests such as incumbency protection or the
representation of rural interests? Of the following two
options-creation of two minority influence districts or of a single
majority-minority district-is one "narrowly tailored" and the other
not? 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? Or can it maintain that change, while attempting to
enhance minority voting power in some other manner? This small
sample only begins to scratch the surface of the problems raised by
the majority's test. But it suffices to illustrate the
unworkability of a standard that is divorced from any measure of
constitutional harm. In that, state efforts to remedy minority vote
dilution are wholly unlike what typically has been labeled
"affirmative action." To the extent that no other racial group is
injured, remedying a Voting Rights Act violation does not involve
preferential treatment. Cf.
Wygant, supra, at 295 (WHITE,
J., concurring in judgment). It involves, instead, an attempt to
equalize treatment, and to provide minority voters with an
effective voice in the political process. The Equal Protection
Clause of the Constitution, surely, does not stand in the way.
IV
Since I do not agree that appellants alleged an equal protection
violation and because the Court of Appeals faithfully followed the
Court's prior cases, I dissent and would affirm the judgment
below.
677
JUSTICE BLACKMUN, dissenting.
I join JUSTICE WHITE'S dissenting opinion. 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. I nevertheless agree that
the conscious use of race in redistricting does not violate the
Equal Protection Clause unless the effect of the redistricting plan
is to deny a particular group equal access to the political process
or to minimize its voting strength unduly. See,
e.
g., Chapman v.
Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 17 (1975);
White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755, 765-766
(1973). It is particularly ironic that the case in which today's
majority chooses to abandon settled law and to recognize for the
first time this "analytically distinct" constitutional claim,
ante, at 652, is a challenge by white voters to the plan
under which North Carolina has sent black representatives to
Congress for the first time since Reconstruction. I dissent.
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
For the reasons stated by JUSTICE WHITE, the decision of the
District Court should be affirmed. I add these comments to
emphasize that the two critical facts in this case are undisputed:
First, the shape of District 12 is so bizarre that it must have
been drawn for the purpose of either advantaging or disadvantaging
a cognizable group of voters; and, second, regardless of that
shape, it
was drawn for the purpose of facilitating the
election of a second black representative from North Carolina.
These unarguable facts, which the Court devotes most of its
opinion to proving, give rise to three constitutional questions:
Does the Constitution impose a requirement of contiguity or
compactness on how the States may draw their electoral districts?
Does the Equal Protection Clause prevent a State from drawing
district boundaries for the purpose of
678
facilitating the election of a member of an identifiable group
of voters? And, finally, if the answer to the second question is
generally "No," should it be different when the favored group is
defined by race? Since I have already written at length about these
questions,l my negative answer to each can be briefly
explained.
The first question is easy. There is no independent
constitutional requirement of compactness or contiguity, and the
Court's opinion (despite its many references to the shape of
District 12, see
ante, at 635-636, 641, 642, 644-648) does
not suggest otherwise. The existence of bizarre and uncouth
district boundaries is powerful evidence of an ulterior purpose
behind the shaping of those boundaries-usually a purpose to
advantage the political party in control of the districting
process. Such evidence will always be useful in cases that lack
other evidence of invidious intent. In this case, however, we know
what the legislators' purpose was:
The North Carolina Legislature drew District 12 to include a
majority of African-American voters. See
ante, at 634-635.
Evidence of the district's shape is therefore convincing, but it is
also cumulative, and, for our purposes, irrelevant.
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
1 See
Cousins v.
City Council of Chicago,
466 F.2d
830, 848-852
(CA7) (Stevens, J., dissenting), cert.
denied, 409 U. S. 893 (1972);
Mobile v.
Bolden,
446 U. S. 55,
83-94 (1980) (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment);
Karcher
v.
Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 744-765
(1983) (STEVENS, J., concurring); see also
Davis v.
Bandemer, 478
U. S. 109, 161-185 (1986) (Powell, J., joined by STEVENS, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part).
2 See
Karcher, 462 U. S., at 748 (STEVENS, J.,
concurring) ("If they serve no purpose other than to favor one
segment-whether racial, ethnic, religious, economic, or
political-that may occupy a position of strength at a particular
point in time, or to disadvantage a politically weak segment of
679
duty to govern impartially is abused when a group with power
over the electoral process defines electoral boundaries solely to
enhance its own political strength at the expense of any weaker
group. That duty, however, is not violated when the majority acts
to facilitate the election of a member of a group that lacks such
power because it remains underrepresented in the state
legislature-whether that group is defined by political affiliation,
by common economic interests, or by religious, ethnic, or racial
characteristics. The difference between constitutional and
unconstitutional gerrymanders has nothing to do with whether they
are based on assumptions about the groups they affect, but whether
their purpose is to enhance the power of the group in control of
the districting process at the expense of any minority group, and
thereby to strengthen the unequal distribution of electoral power.
When an assumption that people in a particular minority group
(whether they are defined by the political party, religion, ethnic
group, or race to which they belong) will vote in a particular way
is used to
benefit that group, no constitutional violation
occurs. Politicians have always relied on assumptions that people
in particular groups are likely to vote in a particular way when
they draw new district lines, and I cannot believe that anything in
today's opinion will stop them from doing so in the future.3
the community, they violate the constitutional guarantee of
equal protection");
Davis v.
Bandemer, 478 U. S., at
178-183, and nn. 21-24 (Powell, J., joined by STEVENS, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part) (describing "grotesque
gerrymandering" and "unusual shapes" drawn solely to deprive
Democratic voters of electoral power).
3 The majority does not acknowledge that we
require such
a showing from plaintiffs who bring a vote dilution claim under § 2
of the Voting Rights Act. Under the three-part test established by
Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 50-51
(1986), a minority group must show that it could constitute the
majority in a single-member district, "that it is politically
cohesive," and "that the white majority votes sufficiently as a
bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred
candidate." At least
680
Finally, we must ask whether otherwise permissible redistricting
to benefit an underrepresented minority group becomes impermissible
when the minority group is defined by its race. The Court today
answers this question in the affirmative, and its answer is wrong.
If it is permissible to draw boundaries to provide adequate
representation for rural voters, for union members, for Hasidic
Jews, for Polish Americans, or for Republicans, it necessarily
follows that it is permissible to do the same thing for members of
the very minority group whose history in the United States gave
birth to the Equal Protection Clause. See,
e. g.,
ante, at 639-641.4 A contrary conclusion could only be
described as perverse.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
JUSTICE SOUTER, dissenting.
Today, the Court recognizes a new cause of action under which a
State's electoral redistricting plan that includes a configuration
"so bizarre,"
ante, at 644, that it "rationally cannot be
understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into
different districts on the basis of race [without] sufficient
justification,"
ante, at 649, will be subjected to strict
scrutiny. In my view there is no justification for the
the latter two of these three conditions depend on proving that
what the Court today brands as "impermissible racial stereotypes,"
ante, at 647, are true. Because
Gingles involved
North Carolina, which the Court admits has earlier established the
existence of "pervasive racial bloc voting,"
ante, at 656,
its citizens and legislators-as well as those from other
States-will no doubt be confused by the Court's requirement of
evidence in one type of case that the Constitution now prevents
reliance on in another. The Court offers them no explanation of
this paradox.
4 The Court's opinion suggests that African-Americans may now be
the only group to which it is unconstitutional to offer specific
benefits from redistricting. Not very long ago, of course, it was
argued that minority groups defined by race were the only groups
the Equal Protection Clause
protected in this context. See
Mobile v.
Bolden, 446 U. S., at 86-90, and nn. 6-10
(STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment).
681
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.
I
Until today, the Court has analyzed equal protection claims
involving race in electoral districting differently from equal
protection claims involving other forms of governmental conduct,
and before turning to the different regimes of analysis it will be
useful to set out the relevant respects in which such districting
differs from the characteristic circumstances in which a State
might otherwise consciously consider race. Unlike other contexts in
which we have addressed the State's conscious use of race, see,
e. g., Richmond v.
J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469 (1989)
(city contracting);
Wygant v.
Jackson Bd. of Ed.,
476 U. S. 267
(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. As
long as members of racial groups have the commonality of interest
implicit in our ability to talk about concepts like "minority
voting strength," and "dilution of minority votes," cf.
Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 46-51
(1986), and as long as racial bloc voting takes place,l legislators
will have to take race into account in order to avoid dilution of
minority voting strength in the districting plans they adopt.2 One
need look
1 "Bloc racial voting is an unfortunate phenomenon, but we are
repeatedly faced with the findings of knowledgeable district courts
that it is a fact of life. Where it exists, most often the result
is that neither white nor black can be elected from a district in
which his race is in the minority."
Beer v.
United
States, 425 U. S.
130, 144 (1976) (WHITE, J., dissenting).
2 Recognition of actual commonality of interest and racially
polarized bloc voting cannot be equated with the "'invocation of
race stereotypes'" described by the Court,
ante, at 648
(quoting
Edmonson v.
Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 630-631
(1991)), and forbidden by our case law.
682
no further than the Voting Rights Act to understand that this
may be required, and we have held that race may constitutionally be
taken into account in order to comply with that Act.
United
Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v.
Carey,
430 U. S. 144,
161-162 (1977)
(UJO) (pluralityopinion of WHITE, J., joined
by Brennan, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ.);
id., at 180, and n.
(Stewart, J., joined by Powell, J., concurring in judgment).3
A second distinction between districting and most other
governmental decisions in which race has figured is that those
other decisions using racial criteria characteristically occur in
circumstances in which the use of race to the advantage of one
person is necessarily at the obvious expense of a member of a
different race. Thus, for example, awarding government contracts on
a racial basis excludes certain firms from competition on racial
grounds. See
Richmond v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
supra, at 493; see also
Fullilove v.
Klutznick,
448 U. S. 448,
484 (1980) (opinion of Burger, C. J.). And when race is used to
supplant seniority in layoffs, someone is laid off who would not be
otherwise.
Wygant v.
Jackson Bd. of Ed., supra, at
282-283 (plurality opinion). The same principle pertains in
nondistricting aspects of voting law, where race-based
discrimination places the disfavored voters at the disadvantage of
exclusion from the franchise without any alternative benefit. See,
e. g., Gomillion v.
Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 341 (1960)
(voters alleged to have been excluded from voting in the
municipality).
In districting, by contrast, the mere placement of an individual
in one district instead of another denies no one a right
3 Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires a covered
jurisdiction to demonstrate either to the Attorney General or to
the District Court that each new districting plan "does not have
the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging
the right to vote on account of race[,] color, or [membership in a
language minority.]" 42 U. S. C. § 1973c; see also § 1973b(f)(2).
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids districting plans that
will have a discriminatory effect on minority groups. § 1973.
683
or benefit provided to others.4 All citizens may register, vote,
and be represented. In whatever district, the individual voter has
a right to vote in each election, and the election will result in
the voter's representation. As we have held, one's constitutional
rights are not violated merely because the candidate one supports
loses the election or because a group (including a racial group) to
which one belongs winds up with a representative from outside that
group. See
Whitcomb v.
Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 153-155
(1971). It is true, of course, that one's vote may be more or less
effective depending on the interests of the other individuals who
are in one's district, and our cases recognize the reality that
members of the same race often have shared interests. "Dilution"
thus refers to the effects of districting decisions not on an
individual's political power viewed in isolation, but on the
political power of a group. See
UJO, supra, at 165
(plurality opinion). This is the reason that the placement of given
voters in a given district, even on the basis of race, does not,
without more, diminish the effectiveness of the individual as a
voter.
II
Our different approaches to equal protection in electoral
districting and nondistricting cases reflect these differences.
There is a characteristic coincidence of disadvantageous effect and
illegitimate purpose associated with the State's use of race in
those situations in which it has immediately trig-
4 The majority's use of "segregation" to describe the effect of
districting here may suggest that it carries effects comparable to
school segregation making it subject to like scrutiny. But a
principal consequence of school segregation was inequality in
educational opportunity provided, whereas use of race (or any other
group characteristic) in districting does not, without more, deny
equality of political participation.
Brown v.
Board of
Education, 347 U.
S. 483, 495 (1954). And while
Bolling v.
Sharpe,
347 U. S. 497, 500 (1954), held that requiring segregation in
public education served no legitimate public purpose, consideration
of race may be constitutionally appropriate in electoral
districting decisions in racially mixed political units. See
supra, at 680-681.
684
gered at least heightened scrutiny (which every Member of the
Court to address the issue has agreed must be applied even to
race-based classifications designed to serve some permissible state
interest).5 Presumably because the legitimate consideration of race
in a districting decision is usually inevitable under the Voting
Rights Act when communities are racially mixed, however, and
because, without more, it does not result in diminished political
effectiveness for anyone, we have not taken the approach of
applying the usual standard of such heightened "scrutiny" to
race-based districting decisions. To be sure, as the Court says, it
would be logically possible to apply strict scrutiny to these cases
(and to uphold those uses of race that are permissible), see
ante, at 653-657. 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-
5 See
Richmond v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469,
493-495 (1989) (plurality opinion of O'CONNOR, J., joined by
REHNQUIST, C. J., and WHITE and KENNEDY, JJ.) (referring variously
to "strict scrutiny," "the standard of review employed in
Wygant," and "heightened scrutiny");
id., at 520
(SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment) ("strict scrutiny");
id., at 535 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (classifications"
'must serve important governmental objectives and must be
substantially related to achievement of those objectives'" (quoting
Regents of Univ. of Cal. v.
Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 359 (1978)
(Brennan, WHITE, Marshall, and BLACKMUN, JJ., concurring in
judgment in part and dissenting in part)); 488 U. S., at 514-516
(STEVENS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)
(undertaking close examination of the characteristics of the
advantaged and disadvantaged racial groups said to justify the
disparate treatment although declining to articulate different
standards of review); see also
Wygant v.
Jackson Bd. of
Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 279-280 (1986) (plurality opinion of
Powell, J.) (equating various articulations of standards of review
"more stringent" than "'reasonableness'" with "strict scrutiny").
Of course the Court has not held that the disadvantaging effect of
these uses of race can never be justified by a sufficiently close
relationship to a sufficiently strong state interest. See,
e.
g., Croson, supra, at 509 (plurality opinion).
685
tution), it has seemed more appropriate for the Court to
identify impermissible uses by describing particular effects
sufficiently serious to justify recognition under the Fourteenth
Amendment. Under our cases there is in general a requirement that
in order to obtain relief under the Fourteenth Amendment, the
purpose and effect of the districting must be to devalue the
effectiveness of a voter compared to what, as a group member, he
would otherwise be able to enjoy. See
UJO, 430 U. S., at
165-166 (plurality opinion of WHITE, J., joined by STEVENS and
REHNQUIST, JJ.);
id., at 179-180 (Stewart, J., joined by
Powell, J., concurring in judgment). JUSTICE WHITE describes the
formulations we have used and the common categories of dilutive
practice in his dissenting opinion. See
ante, at 661-663,
669-670.6
A consequence of this categorical approach is the absence of any
need for further searching "scrutiny" once it has been shown that a
given districting decision has a purpose and effect falling within
one of those categories. If a cognizable harm like dilution or the
abridgment of the right to participate in the electoral process is
shown, the districting plan violates the Fourteenth Amendment. If
not, it does not. Under this approach, in the absence of an
allegation of such cognizable harm, there is no need for further
scrutiny because a gerrymandering claim cannot be proven without
the element of harm. Nor if dilution is proven is there any need
for further constitutional scrutiny; there has never been a
suggestion that such use of race could be justified under any type
of scrutiny, since the dilution of the right to vote can not be
said to serve any legitimate governmental purpose.
There is thus no theoretical inconsistency in having two
distinct approaches to equal protection analysis, one for
6 In this regard, I agree with JUSTICE WHITE'S assessment of the
difficulty the white plaintiffs would have here in showing that
their opportunity to participate equally in North Carolina's
electoral process has been unconstitutionally diminished. See
ante, at 666-667, and n. 6 (dissenting opinion).
686
cases of electoral districting and one for most other types of
state governmental decisions. Nor, because of the distinctions
between the two categories, is there any risk that Fourteenth
Amendment districting law as such will be taken to imply anything
for purposes of general Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny about
"benign" racial discrimination, or about group entitlement as
distinct from individual protection, or about the appropriateness
of strict or other heightened scrutiny.7
III
The Court appears to accept this, and it does not purport to
disturb the law of vote dilution in any way. See
ante, at
652 (acknowledging that
"UJO set forth a standard under
which white voters can establish unconstitutional vote dilution").
Instead, the Court creates a new "analytically distinct,"
ibid., cause of action, the principal element of which is
that a districting plan be "so bizarre on its face,"
ante,
at 644, or "irrational on its face,"
ante, at 652, or
"extremely irregular on its face,"
ante, at 642, that it
"rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort
to segregate citizens into separate voting districts on the basis
of race without sufficient justification,"
ante, at 652.
Pleading such an element, the Court holds, suffices without a
further allegation of harm, to state a claim upon which relief can
be granted under the Fourteenth Amendment. See
ante, at
649.
It may be that the terms for pleading this cause of action will
be met so rarely that this case will wind up an aberra-
7 The Court accuses me of treating the use of race in electoral
redistricting as a "benign" form of discrimination.
Ante, at
653. What I am saying is that in electoral districting there
frequently are permissible uses of race, such as its use to comply
with the Voting Rights Act, as well as impermissible ones. In
determining whether a use of race is permissible in cases in which
there is a bizarrely shaped district, we can readily look to its
effects, just as we would in evaluating any other electoral
districting scheme.
687
tion. The shape of the district at issue in this case is indeed
so bizarre that few other examples are ever likely to carry the
unequivocal implication of impermissible use of race that the Court
finds here. It may therefore be that few electoral districting
cases are ever likely to employ the strict scrutiny the Court holds
to be applicable on remand if appellants' allegations are "not
contradicted."
Ante, at 653; see also
ante, at
658.8
Nonetheless, in those cases where this cause of action is
sufficiently pleaded, the State will have to justify its decision
to consider race as being required by a compelling state interest,
and its use of race as narrowly tailored to that interest.
Meanwhile, in other districting cases, specific consequential harm
will still need to be pleaded and proven, in the absence of which
the use of race may be invalidated only if it is shown to serve no
legitimate state purpose. Cf.
Bolling
The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the
narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently
from other districting claims.9 The only justification I
8While the Court "express[es] no view as to whether 'the
intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more,'
always gives rise to an equal protection claim,"
ante, at
649 (quoting
ante, at 668 (WHITE, J., dissenting)), it
repeatedly emphasizes that there is some reason to believe that a
configuration devised with reference to traditional districting
principles would present a case falling outside the cause of action
recognized today. See
ante, at 642, 649, 652, 657-658.
9 The Court says its new cause of action is justified by what I
understand to be some ingredients of stigmatic harm, see
ante, at 647-648, and by a "threa[t] to ... our system of
representative democracy,"
ante, at 650, both caused by the
mere adoption of a districting plan with the elements I have
described in the text,
supra, at 685. To begin with, the
complaint nowhere alleges any type of stigmatic harm. See App. to
Juris. Statement 67a-lOOa (Complaint and Motion for Preliminary
Injunction and For Temporary Restraining Order). Putting that to
one side, it seems utterly implausible to me to presume, as the
Court does, that North Carolina's creation of this strangely shaped
majority-minority district "generates" within the white plaintiffs
here anything comparable to "a feeling of inferi-
688
can imagine would be the preservation of "sound districting
principles,"
UJO, 430 U. S., at 168, such as compactness and
contiguity. But as JUSTICE WHITE points out, see
ante, at
672 (dissenting opinion), and as the Court acknowledges, see
ante, at 647, we have held that such principles are not
constitutionally required, with the consequence that their absence
cannot justify the distinct constitutional regime put in place by
the Court today. Since there is no justification for the departure
here from the principles that continue to govern electoral
districting cases generally in accordance with our prior decisions,
I would not respond to the seeming egregiousness of the
redistricting now before us by untethering the concept of racial
gerrymander in such a case from the concept of harm exemplified by
dilution. In the absence of an allegation of such harm, I would
affirm the judgment of the District Court. I respectfully
dissent.
ority as to their status in the community that may affect their
hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."
Brown
v.
Board of Education, 347 U. S., at 494. As for
representative democracy, I have difficulty seeing how it is
threatened (indeed why it is not, rather, enhanced) by districts
that are not even alleged to dilute anyone's vote.
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