Court Looks At Racial Gerrymandering Justices Expected To Clarify Limits Of Pooling Voter Clout

The racial politics of running for Congress in Georgia and for a local school board in Louisiana provided the backdrop Monday as the Supreme Court examined the use of race in redrawing election districts.

In separate argument sessions, the court appeared wary of redistricting efforts aimed at maximizing black candidates’ success.

In the Georgia case, the Clinton administration and black voters are asking the court to strike down a congressional map that features one majority-black district so a plan with two can be put in place.

In the Louisiana case, a school board redistricting plan that includes no majority-black districts is under attack.

Rulings, expected by July, may clarify just how far the justices will let legislators and local officials nationwide go to preserve or enhance the voting clout of racial and ethnic minorities.

The court has frowned upon such efforts in a series of decisions since 1993, ruling that drawing districts mainly to boost minority voting power almost always amounts to unlawful racial gerrymandering.

At one point Monday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy sardonically noted that a Justice Department effort to refashion Georgia’s 11-district congressional map to provide two majority-black districts “just so happens” to split counties “along white-black lines.”

A lower court opted instead for a plan with one majority-black district.

When Justice Department lawyer Seth Waxman said the court-drawn plan failed to respect the Georgia Legislature’s desire for two majority-black congressional districts, several justices sounded dubious.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that the three-judge federal court in Georgia concluded that the state Legislature had drawn such a plan only as a “result of Justice Department coercion.”

At the federal government’s urging after the 1990 census, Georgia had created a redistricting plan with three majority-black districts. But the Supreme Court struck it down last year.

A. Lee Parks, representing a group of white voters who support the court-imposed plan, noted that two black incumbents forced to seek re-election in majority-white districts were winners in last month’s elections.

“The real world of this case … is that both minority candidates won,” he said. “They found positions that would appeal to both black and white voters, and they won.”