The U.S. Attorney General rejected a North Carolina congressional reapportionment plan because the plan created only one black-majority district. North Carolina submitted a second plan creating two black-majority districts. One of these districts was, in parts, no wider than the interstate road along which it stretched. Five North Carolina residents challenged the constitutionality of this unusually shaped district, alleging that its only purpose was to secure the election of additional black representatives. After a three-judge District Court ruled that they failed to state a constitutional claim, the residents appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Did the North Carolina residents' claim, that the State created a racially gerrymandered district, raise a valid constitutional issue under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause?
5-4 for Shaw
Majority Opinion:
Yes. The Court held that although North Carolina's reapportionment plan was racially neutral on its face, the resulting district shape was bizarre enough to suggest that it constituted an effort to separate voters into different districts based on race. The unusual district, while perhaps created by noble intentions, seemed to exceed what was reasonably necessary to avoid racial imbalances. After concluding that the residents' claim did give rise to an equal protection challenge, the Court remanded - adding that in the absence of contradictory evidence, the District Court would have to decide whether or not some compelling governmental interest justified North Carolina's plan.
Dissenting Opinion:
"(1) That the case was brought by white voters challenging the district. Its boundaries had enabled the district's majority of black voters to elect the majority-white state's first black representatives to Congress since 1898, when George Henry White was re-elected to his second term in Congress from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district. (In 1899, after North Carolina Democrats passed a new state constitution to disfranchise blacks, White chose not to seek a third term in Congress. He told the Chicago Tribune, "I cannot live in North Carolina and be a man and be treated as a man." He moved to Washington, DC.)
(2) that the holding citing the 14th Amendment perversely made redistricting that advantaged blacks subject to more rigorous scrutiny than redistricting advantaging other non-racial groups, though the 14th amendment was intended to provide for equal protection for blacks after emancipation and abolition of slavery, and;
(3) that allowing race-based voting blocs is distinct from other forms of affirmative action, insofar as allowing race-based blocs does not deny another person her rights and privileges, as for example, race-based hiring and retention practices do."
Source: Wikipedia