The Supreme Court struck down two congressional districts in North Carolina on Monday because they had been gerrymandered along racial lines, with Justice Clarence Thomas joining the court’s liberals to form the majority.
The justices said North Carolina’s Republicans had packed additional black voters into the two already heavily African-American districts, which in turn helped the GOP win more House seats in those voters’ previous districts.
Justice Elena Kagan said it was clear that race played a crucial role in how the districts were drawn. The “state’s mapmakers … purposely established a racial target” that African-Americans would make up the majority, she said. And the result was “a district with stark racial borders.”
Kagan rejected the state’s defense that it acted for partisan political reasons. Maybe so, she said, but that did not excuse the drawing of lines based on race. The Constitution forbids a state “from separating its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race,” she said.
Thomas concurred in a separate opinion, saying that since the 1990s, he had taken the view that districts drawn along racial lines are unconstitutional.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, and was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The ruling in Cooper vs. Harris upholds a lower court decision and requires the state to redraw the districts, one in the northeastern part of the state and other that runs through the center of the state.
