The US Supreme Court has ruled that North Carolina Republicans improperly used race as a factor in redrawing 2011 congressional district boundaries.<\/p>\n
The 5-3 ruling upheld a lower court decision last year forcing legislators to draft new district maps.<\/p>\n
Two predominantly black congressional districts are invalidated as a result.<\/p>\n
The case was the latest in a number of lawsuits accusing Republicans of trying to limit the influence of black voters by grouping them into districts.<\/p>\n
The ruling upheld a federal district court decision that found lawmakers had used race to carve out two of North Carolina’s 13 House of Representatives districts in order to benefit the Republicans.<\/p>\n
North Carolina ballot box battle<\/p>\n
The targeted districts – the 1st and the 12th – are both held by Democrats. Republicans hold 10 of the state’s 13 seats in the House.<\/p>\n
State Republicans argued that they tried to increase the districts’ black population in order to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters.<\/p>\n
But Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the ruling, said the 1st district “produced boundaries amplifying divisions between blacks and whites”.<\/p>\n
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
Image caption<\/p>\n
The two North Carolina districts in question have come before the Supreme Court before<\/p>\n
She also said of the 12th that “race, not politics, accounted for the district’s reconfiguration”.<\/p>\n
The court was unanimous in striking down the 1st district while conservatives Justice Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented on the 12th district ruling.<\/p>\n
They argued that redrawing the 12th district map was used to help Republicans and not to discriminate against black voters.<\/p>\n
Justice Alito also said the high court ignored an earlier precedent set in 2001 when it upheld a similar version of the same district.<\/p>\n
“A precedent of this court should not be treated like a disposable household item – say a paper plate or a napkin – to be used once and then tossed in the trash,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
Judge Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when the arguments were heard, did not participate in the ruling.<\/p>\n
Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said in a statement: “The North Carolina Republican legislature tried to rig congressional elections by drawing unconstitutional districts that discriminated against African-Americans and that’s wrong.”<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court in 2015 ruled 5-4 to strike down a lower court’s decision that upheld a similar Republican-backed redistricting plan in Alabama.<\/p>\n
In a separate case in March, the justices ordered a lower court to review whether Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature tried to unlawfully diminish black voter influence through its redistricting plan.<\/p>\n
The court threw out a decision that had upheld all 12 of Virginia’s legislature districts that were challenged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Supreme Court has ruled that North Carolina Republicans improperly used race as a factor in redrawing 2011 congressional district boundaries. The 5-3 ruling upheld a lower court decision last year forcing legislators to draft new district maps. Two predominantly black congressional districts are invalidated as a result. The case was the latest in a number of lawsuits accusing Republicans of trying to limit the influence of black voters by grouping them into districts. The ruling upheld a federal district court decision that found lawmakers had used race to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7101,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099\/revisions\/7101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}