Bartlett v. Strickland
| Decision Date | 09 March 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 07–689.,07–689. |
| Citation | 129 S.Ct. 1231,173 L.Ed.2d 173,556 U.S. 1 |
| Parties | Gary BARTLETT, Executive Director of North Carolina State Board of Elections, et al., Petitioners, v. Dwight STRICKLAND et al. |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Christopher G. Browning, Jr., for Petitioners.
Carl W. Thurman III, Wilmington, NC, for Respondents.
Daryl Joseffer, for United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Respondents.
Walter Dellinger, Sri Srinivasan, Irving L. Gornstein, O'Melveny & Myers LLP, Washington, D.C., Roy Cooper, Attorney General, Christopher G. Browning, Jr., Grayson G. Kelley, Tiare B. Smiley, Alexander McC. Peters, Susan K. Nichols, Raleigh, N.C., for Petitioners.
Justice KENNEDY announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice ALITO join.
This case requires us to interpret § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973 (2000 ed.). The question is whether the statute can be invoked to require state officials to draw election-district lines to allow a racial minority to join with other voters to elect the minority's candidate of choice, even where the racial minority is less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the district to be drawn. To use election-law terminology: In a district that is not a majority-minority district, if a racial minority could elect its candidate of choice with support from crossover majority voters, can § 2 require the district to be drawn to accommodate this potential?
The case arises in a somewhat unusual posture. State authorities who created a district now invoke the Voting Rights Act as a defense. They argue that § 2 required them to draw the district in question in a particular way, despite state laws to the contrary. The state laws are provisions of the North Carolina Constitution that prohibit the General Assembly from dividing counties when drawing legislative districts for the State House and Senate. Art. II, §§ 3, 5. We will adopt the term used by the state courts and refer to both sections of the State Constitution as the Whole County Provision. See Pender County v. Bartlett, 361 N.C. 491, 493, 649 S.E.2d 364, 366 (2007) (case below).
It is common ground that state election-law requirements like the Whole County Provision may be superseded by federal law—for instance, the one-person, one-vote principle of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964). Here the question is whether § 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires district lines to be drawn that otherwise would violate the Whole County Provision. That, in turn, depends on how the statute is interpreted.
We begin with the election district. The North Carolina House of Representatives is the larger of the two chambers in the State's General Assembly. District 18 of that body lies in the southeastern part of North Carolina. Starting in 1991, the General Assembly drew District 18 to include portions of four counties, including Pender County, in order to create a district with a majority African–American voting-age population and to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. Following the 2000 census, the North Carolina Supreme Court, to comply with the Whole County Provision, rejected the General Assembly's first two statewide redistricting plans. See Stephenson v. Bartlett, 355 N.C. 354, 375, 562 S.E.2d 377, 392, stay denied, 535 U.S. 1301, 122 S.Ct. 1751, 152 L.Ed.2d 1015 (2002) (Rehnquist, C. J., in chambers); Stephenson v. Bartlett, 357 N.C. 301, 314, 582 S.E.2d 247, 254 (2003).
District 18 in its present form emerged from the General Assembly's third redistricting attempt, in 2003. By that time the African–American voting-age population had fallen below 50 percent in the district as then drawn, and the General Assembly no longer could draw a geographically compact majority-minority district. Rather than draw District 18 to keep Pender County whole, however, the General Assembly drew it by splitting portions of Pender and New Hanover counties. District 18 has an African–American voting-age population of 39.36 percent. App. 139. Had it left Pender County whole, the General Assembly could have drawn District 18 with an African–American voting-age population of 35.33 percent. Id., at 73. The General Assembly's reason for splitting Pender County was to give African–American voters the potential to join with majority voters to elect the minority group's candidate of its choice. Ibid. Failure to do so, state officials now submit, would have diluted the minority group's voting strength in violation of § 2.
In May 2004, Pender County and the five members of its board of commissioners filed the instant suit in North Carolina state court against the Governor of North Carolina, the Director of the State Board of Elections, and other state officials. The plaintiffs alleged that the 2003 plan violated the Whole County Provision by splitting Pender County into two House districts. Id. , at 5–14. The state-official defendants answered that dividing Pender County was required by § 2. Id., at 25. As the trial court recognized, the procedural posture of this case differs from most § 2 cases. Here the defendants raise § 2 as a defense. As a result, the trial court stated, they are “in the unusual position” of bearing the burden of proving that a § 2 violation would have occurred absent splitting Pender County to draw District 18. App. to Pet. for Cert. 90a.
The trial court first considered whether the defendant state officials had established the three threshold requirements for § 2 liability under Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50–51, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986) —namely, (1) that the minority group “is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district,” (2) that the minority group is “politically cohesive,” and (3) “that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.”
As to the first Gingles requirement, the trial court concluded that, although African–Americans were not a majority of the voting-age population in District 18, the district was a “de facto” majority-minority district because African–Americans could get enough support from crossover majority voters to elect the African–Americans' preferred candidate. The court ruled that African–Americans in District 18 were politically cohesive, thus satisfying the second requirement. And later, the plaintiffs stipulated that the third Gingles requirement was met. App. to Pet. for Cert. at 102a–103a, 130a. The court then determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that § 2 required the General Assembly to split Pender County. The court sustained the lines for District 18 on that rationale. Id., at 116a–118a.
Three of the Pender County Commissioners appealed the trial court's ruling that the defendants had established the first Gingles requirement. The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed. It held that a “minority group must constitute a numerical majority of the voting population in the area under consideration before Section 2 ... requires the creation of a legislative district to prevent dilution of the votes of that minority group.” 361 N.C., at 502, 649 S.E.2d, at 371. On that premise the State Supreme Court determined District 18 was not mandated by § 2 because African–Americans do not “constitute a numerical majority of citizens of voting age.” Id., at 507, 649 S.E.2d, at 374. It ordered the General Assembly to redraw District 18. Id., at 510, 649 S.E.2d, at 376.
We granted certiorari, 552 U.S. 1256, 128 S.Ct. 1648, 170 L.Ed.2d 352 (2008), and now affirm.
Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an important step in the struggle to end discriminatory treatment of minorities who seek to exercise one of the most fundamental rights of our citizens: the right to vote. Though the Act as a whole was the subject of debate and controversy, § 2 prompted little criticism. The likely explanation for its general acceptance is that, as first enacted, § 2 tracked, in part, the text of the Fifteenth Amendment. It prohibited practices “imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 79 Stat. 437; cf. U.S. Const., Amdt. 15 (); see also S.Rep. No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 19–20 (1965). In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 60–61, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 64 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980), this Court held that § 2, as it then read, “no more than elaborates upon ... the Fifteenth Amendment” and was “intended to have an effect no different from that of the Fifteenth Amendment itself.”
In 1982, after the Mobile ruling, Congress amended § 2, giving the statute its current form. The original Act had employed an intent requirement, prohibiting only those practices “imposed or applied ... to deny or abridge” the right to vote. 79 Stat. 437. The amended version of § 2 requires consideration of effects, as it prohibits practices “imposed or applied ... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment” of the right to vote. 96 Stat. 134, 42 U.S.C. § 1973(a) (2000 ed.). The 1982 amendments also added a subsection, § 2(b), providing a test for determining whether a § 2 violation has occurred. The relevant text of the statute now states:
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... ... The Legislature has just cause to clarify beyond debate whether this effect is one it actually intends. Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U.S. 1, , 129 S.Ct. 1231, 1250, 173 L.Ed.2d 173 (2009) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting). -------- Notes: 1 Section 3701 defines an ... ...