Virginia Racial Gerrymandering Case Punted By Supreme Court

Court battles over the racial implications of voting districts will continue after the Supreme Court on Wednesday kicked a Virginia case back down to the lower court, asking it to review its decision.

The case, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, concerns 12 districts in Virginia for the House of Delegates that complainants allege were drawn in a racially discriminatory way.

As Rick Hasen explained on his Election Law Blog, precedent set since Miller v. Johnson in 1995 holds that districts cannot be drawn along racial lines without adequate justification. A district court in Richmond, Virginia, originally ruled that 11 of the districts were legitimate, but the last, Distict 75, failed to meet the Miller standard.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the court's decision that Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from in part, noted that districts drawn along racial lines harm individuals by subjecting them to racial classification and by forcing them to be represented by a lawmaker who is primarily incentivized to represent a particularly racial group.

However, because electoral districting is challenging, SCOTUS says courts should generally give deference to the judgments of legislators.

Nevertheless, Wednesday's ruling found that the lower court used too strict a test to determine whether or not the districts were justifiably drawn.

"A conflict or inconsistency between the enacted plan and traditional redistricting criteria is not a threshold requirement or a mandatory precondition in order for a challenger to establish a claim of racial gerrymandering," the Supreme Court ruled.

"The proper inquiry, however, concerns the actual considerations that provided the essential basis for the lines drawn, not post hoc justifications that the legislature could have used but did not," it continued.

In other words, those challenging the state do not necessarily have to show that the lawmakers diverted from established procedures for drawing district lines to hold that racial gerrymandering took place. As long as districts were drawn with the intention of racial segregation, they should be legally suspect. With that in mind, the lower court will reconsider its previous judgment.

Photo credit: Matt Wade