The Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling that held a minority-majority congressional district could only be created if the minority population in the County reaches a threshold of 50%, without which the creation of a majority minority district is not mandated under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Legislators in North Carolina were seeking to redraw a congressional district in a manner that split Pender County, which would have violated a local law prohibiting the "splitting" of state counties to create congressional districts. Advocates of the redistricting plan invoked Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to make their case, but the Supreme Court ruled against them, with the majority holding that the minority population was not large enough to qualify for Section 2 protection.
When the 1965 Voting Rights Act was originally passed, Section 2 merely reinforced 15th Amendment protections against racial discrimination in voting. But a revision in 1982 mandated the creation of majority-minority voting districts under certain circumstances in order to ensure that "protected populations"--groups that have been historically discriminated against, have access to the political process.
“I think it's more clearly a greater burden today than it was yesterday," voting rights expert Daniel Tokaji says. "The ruling doesn’t come as an enormous surprise, given the conservative majority’s uneasiness with the compelled creation of majority minority districts.”
This impact of this case is actually relatively small compared to upcoming arguments focused on the Constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which deals with whether or not "preclearance," a legal requirement that areas with a history of discriminating against minority voters preclear their election law changes with the Justice Department.
“People are going to try to read the tea leaves in this decision and see how it affects...The one involving the constitutionality of Section 5," Tokaji says. "I would not read a great deal into this opinion [for that purpose]."
UPDATE: Kristen Clarke of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund notes that Justice Kennedy, in his plurality opinion, reaffirmed the importance of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act:
Most significantly, the Court, in Justice Kennedy's plurality opinion, recognized the political reality of ongoing voting discrimination in our country. Kennedy observed that "racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history." Moreover, the Court acknowledged that "[m]uch remains to be done to ensure that citizens of all races have equal opportunity to share and participate in our democratic processes and traditions."
-- A. Serwer
