# Gomillion v. Lightfoot > Supreme Court of the United States · November 14, 1960 · 364 U.S. 339 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9422071 ## Case - **Full name:** GOMILLION Et Al. v. LIGHTFOOT, MAYOR OF TUSKEGEE, Et Al. - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** November 14, 1960 - **Citations:** 364 U.S. 339; 81 S. Ct. 125; 5 L. Ed. 2d 110; 1960 U.S. LEXIS 189 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Whittaker - **Judges:** Frankfurter, Whittaker, Douglas, Green, Peters - **Cited by:** 808 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9422071 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - explaining that "[njot every decision influenced by race is equally objectionable and strict scrutiny is designed to provide a framework for carefully examining the importance and the sincerity of the reasons advanced by the governmental decisionmaker for the use of race in th… - holding that "when a legislature singles out a readily isolated segment of a racial minority for special discriminatory treatment," such as by reconfiguring city boundaries so as to deprive African-American residents of the right to vote in municipal elections, such action "vi… - finding that allegation of discrimination in violation of Fifteenth Amendment lifted reapportionment dispute “out of the so-called ‘political’ arena and into the conventional sphere of constitutional litigation” - holding that statute violated the Fifteenth Amendment where it moved voting boundary to the detriment of all but four or five African American voters, but did not remove a single white voter from the boundary - finding it facially evident that legislation was designed to exclude Black voters where all but “four or five” of the city’s Black residents were drawn out of the city limits during legislative redistricting ## Opinion text *349 Mr. Justice Whittaker, concurring. I concur in the Court’s judgment, but not in the whole of its opinion. It seems to me that the decision should be rested not on the Fifteenth Amendment, but rather on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. I am doubtful that the aver-ments of the complaint, taken for present purposes to be true, show a purpose by Act No. 140 to abridge petitioners’ “right ... to vote,” in the Fifteenth Amendment sense. It seems to me that the “right ... to vote” that is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment is but the same right to vote as is enjoyed by all others within the same election precinct, ward or other political division. And, inasmuch as no one has the right to vote in a political division, or in a local election concerning only an area in which he does not reside, it would seem to follow that one’s right to vote in Division A is not abridged by a redistricting that places his residence in Division B if he there enjoys the same voting privileges as all others in that Division, even though the redistricting was done by the State for the purpose of placing a racial group of citizens in Division B rather than A. But it does seem clear to me that accomplishment of a State’s purpose — to use the Court’s phrase — of “fencing Negro citizens out of” Division A and into Division B is an unlawful segregation of races of citizens, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 ; Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 ; and, as stated, I would think the decision should be rested on that ground — which, incidentally, clearly would not involve, just as the cited cases did not involve, the Colegrove problem. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9422071. Public record. Not legal advice.