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Gerrymandering: Drawing Racialized Lines to Suppress the Minority Vote


Within the 2017-18 term alone, the United States Supreme Court is expected to hear and adjudicate three trials dealing with one of the most pressing political issues today: gerrymandering. The most recent case to be added to this list of three is Abbott v. Perez, which tackles the issue of racial gerrymandering in Texas and will have serious repercussions on our currently unjust and untrustworthy voting system. To predict the outcome in Abbot v. Perez, we can look to the precedents set by Mobile v. Bolden (1980) and Shaw v. Reno (1993) and thereby determine that Texas’ Republican legislators are in violation of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, and the legal standards of strict scrutiny.

In 1812, the term “gerrymandering” was first coined in the Boston Gazette in response to Governor Elbridge Gerry’s redrawing of Massachusetts’s election districts. Although the Supreme Court first held that gerrymandering was an unconstitutional practice in Davis v. Bandemer (1986), we continue to see its impact today as many American voters distrust the electoral process due to gerrymandering.[1] Contributing further to the debate, Abbott v. Perez has generated public discourse on the role of voters who are generally marginalized by the court system, such as those involved in Latino and African American organizations in Texas. This case is particularly noteworthy because while our judicial system frequently deals with cases involving partisan gerrymandering (e.g. Party of North Carolina v. Martin (1992), Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004), etc.), rarely does it see cases dealing with racial discrimination against minority voters when redrawing district lines.

It has been proven that minorities believe the Democratic Party to be more representative of their ideology; thus, minorities have a tendency to vote blue.[2] As such, the practice of racial gerrymandering leads to silencing the minority vote, which Republican lawmakers in Texas are guilty of and should be held accountable for. The plaintiffs in Davis v. Bandemer are alleging that racial gerrymandering is in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits “voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups,” as well as the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.[3] Now, the Supreme Court will be faced with the task of assessing whether the plaintiffs have reasonable grounds for their claim.

Through the 20th century, American courts have had their fair share of decisions which have served to further suppress minorities from voting. In Mobile during the late 1970s, Alabama’s black residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the city and its three commissioners. Residents alleged that the city’s electoral system violated the 14th and 15th Amendments and § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After analyzing the Fifteenth Amendment and Voting Rights Act claims, Justice Potter Stewart found that because “[n]egroes register and vote in Mobile ‘without hindrance,’ and that there are no official obstacles in the way of Negroes who wish to become candidates for election to the Commission,” there was no discriminatory purpose behind the city’s electoral system.[4] Similarly, the Court rejected the 14th Amendment claims stating, “the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment does not require proportional representation as an imperative of political organization.”

However, twenty years later, the Supreme Court held a more critical perspective on the American voting system in the 1993 case, Shaw v. Reno. The plaintiffs in this case filed a lawsuit against North Carolina Governor Janet Reno, claiming that two “bizarre-looking” congressional districts were shaped to include a majority of African Americans and should therefore be deemed unconstitutional. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor gave a response to these claims, stating that redrawing district lines to include people of one race separated by geographical and political boundaries, “who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid.”[5] However, despite this claim, the Supreme Court did not rule that using race as a factor when drawing districting lines was unconstitutional. Instead, the Court insisted that, because the legislation used to create these district lines involved racial classification, it would be subject to the standard review of strict scrutiny.

Strict scrutiny refers to a form of judicial review used to test statutes and government action against observance of principles. There are three standards under which a law meets the criteria set under strict scrutiny: (1) there is a compelling government interest, (2) it is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest, and (3) it is performed in the least restrictive means possible.[6] Nonetheless, Shaw v. Reno was sent back to the district court to be evaluated under these conditions. And, given the similarities between Shaw v. Reno and Abbott v. Perez, it is highly likely that Texas’ racialized district lines will be subject to the same level of strict scrutiny.

In the rare case that the Supreme Court does not find Texas’ Republican legislators’ use of race in redrawing district lines to be in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the 14th Amendment, or the 15th Amendment, the Court should hold that the purposes of these legislators do not meet the standards of strict scrutiny. As voters and politicians alike continue to question a system of gerrymandering in which the politician picks their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians, it is vital that the Supreme Court does not silence the voices of minority groups – and siding with Perez will finally be one step in the right direction.

[1] “Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109 (1986),” Justia US Supreme Court, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/478/109/case.html.

[2] “Economic Demographics of Democrats,” Debt.org: America’s Debt Help Organization, https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/.

[3] “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” The United States Department of Justice, last modified August 8. 2015, https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-2-voting-rights-act.

[4] “City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980),” Justia US Supreme Court, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/446/55/case.html.

[5] “THE SUPREME COURT; Excerpts From High Court's Opinions on Racial Gerrymandering,” The New York Times, June 29,1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/29/us/the-supreme-court-excerpts-from-high-court-s-opinions-on-radial-gerrymandering.html?pagewanted=all.

[6] “Strict Scrutiny,” Cornell Law: Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_scrutiny.


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