The U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated this week that its job is to determine what’s legal, not necessarily what’s right.
If it could apply a “what’s right” standard, it would throw out all 13 of North Carolina’s congressional districts. They’re a travesty, designed to produce rigged outcomes.
The results of last month’s elections prove their effectiveness. With 2.4 million Republican votes in congressional races statewide, the GOP elected 10 members of Congress — one for every 240,000 votes. With 2.1 million votes, Democrats elected three — one for every 700,000 votes. If there were ever a violation of the principle of “one man, one vote,” it happened in North Carolina.
That wasn’t the question before the Supreme Court Monday — although it should be. It heard arguments in McCrory v. Harris, an appeal of a lower-court decision that said North Carolina’s 1st and 12th congressional districts were drawn with race as their predominant factor in violation of constitutional principles.
The issues are legally muddy.
“Only one thing was really clear after the Supreme Court spent two hours on Monday trying anew to craft a workable constitutional standard for judging when redistricting maps are based too heavily upon the race of voters,” veteran court observer Lyle Denniston wrote on his Law News blog.
What was that? The justices are frustrated. So are we.
The two districts, created in 2011, contained majorities of black voters. The 12th included portions of Guilford County and is represented by Alma Adams, formerly of Greensboro.
The state defended the 1st District as necessary to meet Voting Rights Act requirements. Its lawyers admitted the 12th was crafted for political reasons: to fill it with as many Democrats as possible.
That’s the real complaint by plaintiffs. Republican legislators made those two districts, as well as the Triangle-based 4th District, heavily Democratic. In doing so, they left the state’s 10 other districts reliably Republican in how they vote.
The result of the elections was just as planned: In a state that’s closely divided, Republicans easily won 10 out of 13 U.S. House seats. They did it, not necessarily with better candidates, but by grouping voters in ways that give strong advantages to their party.
In the past, the Supreme Court has allowed gerrymandering for partisan purposes but not to discriminate against black voters. In a 2015 case from Alabama, however, it noted that party and race intersect when blacks vote heavily Democratic and whites generally favor Republicans, as they do in the South.
Justices admitted Monday that it’s very difficult to discern when legislators are acting with partisan or with racial motivations. They see a dilemma that promises to present itself again and again until they find a solution.
They should take another approach and apply the constitution’s equal protection clause to voters in general, not just to minority voters. When gerrymandering is used to dilute the voting power of any group, the rights of those people are violated.
Consider Guilford County, where about 60 percent of voters cast their ballots for Democrats last month. Yet the county, split between two congressional districts, will be represented by Republicans in Congress. Democratic voters — whether they’re black, white, Hispanic, Asian or other — are all denied a reasonable chance to elect someone who speaks for their views and interests in Washington.
Legislators tried to draw these districts to barely comply with legal requirements, but their objective was to predetermine election outcomes to favor one party at the expense of the other. That is an assault on democracy, it’s not right, and the court shouldn’t let it stand.
