explaining that the state does not have a compelling interest in "complying with whatever preclearance mandates the Justice Department issues," and holding that when a state relies on the Department of Justice's "determination that race-based districting is necessary to comply with the [VRA], the judiciary retains an independent obligation in adjudicating consequent equal protection challenges to ensure that the State's actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest"
How later courts described this case
- explaining that the state does not have a compelling interest in "complying with whatever preclearance mandates the Justice Department issues," and holding that when a state relies on the Department of Justice's "determination that race-based districting is necessary to comply with the [VRA], the judiciary retains an independent obligation in adjudicating consequent equal protection challenges to ensure that the State's actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest"
- finding that the following examples provided direct evidence of racial motivation: legislator’s email referring to the transfer of voters in and out of districts based on the racial makeup of the voting-age population; state’s concession that one of its goals was to create an additional majority-minority district; legislator’s statement that the creation of majority-minority districts was the principal reason driving the redistricting plan
- recognizing that "[t]he distinction between being aware of racial considerations and being motivated by them may be difficult to make," but nonetheless holding that a racial gerrymandering plaintiff may prevail by showing "that race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature's decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district"
- holding that a state subordinated traditional redistricting criteria to race by noting the objective characteristics of the district which strongly indicated racial 22 No. 2021AP1450-OA motivations as well as statements made by map drawers, confirming the use of race in drawing districts
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Navajo Nation v. San Juan County, 162 F. Supp. 3d 1162 (2016)
Turner was decided two years before Shaw I and Miller and is clearly distinguishable on the facts.
The opinion
Justice O’Connor,
concurring.
I understand the threshold standard the Court adopts— that “the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles ... to racial considerations,” ante, at 916 — to be a demanding one. To invoke strict scrutiny, a plaintiff must show that the State has relied on race in substantial disregard of customary and traditional districting practices. Those practices provide a crucial frame of reference and therefore constitute a significant governing principle in cases of this kind. The standard would be no different if a legislature had drawn the boundaries to favor some other ethnic group; certainly the standard does not treat efforts to create majority-minority districts less favorably than similar efforts on behalf of other groups. Indeed, the driving force behind the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment was the desire to end legal discrimination against blacks.
Application of the Court’s standard does not throw into doubt the vast majority of the Nation’s 435 congressional districts, where presumably the States have drawn the boundaries in accordance with their customary districting principles. That is so even though race may well have been *929 considered in the redistricting process. See Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 646 (1993); ante, at 916. But application of the Court’s standard helps achieve Shaw’s basic objective of making extreme instances of gerrymandering subject to meaningful judicial review. I therefore join the Court’s opinion.
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