Opinion ID: 75887
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Race Predominated Over Traditional Districting Factors

Text: 35 The district court did not cite any of the extensive testimony from the county commissioners, Coates and Ms. Meggers that make it clear that, although malapportionment was the  why  of the redistricting plan, race was the  how.  All of this testimony conceded that when decisions had to be made on how to shift population from one district to another, racial considerations dominated. The testimony was overwhelming that no shift was made that would have done damage to Ms. Meggers' goal of 60% black voting age population in Districts 1 and 2. In view of this record, even the district court conceded that it is virtually beyond dispute ... that the County intended to maintain these districts as majority-minority districts in 1992. 36 Nevertheless, the court concluded that race did not predominate over traditional districting principles, because it found that the County's four electoral districts are relatively compact, adhere to natural boundaries, preserve communities of interest, and protect incumbents. We disagree. 37 The mere recitation that traditional factors were not subordinated to race is insufficient to insulate the County's decision to maximize the black populations of Districts 1 and 2. Miller, 515 U.S. at 919, 115 S.Ct. 2475. The County's contention that traditional factors were not subordinated to race is not supported by the record. The evidence is overwhelming that the County decided at the outset to maintain its two black voting districts and to assign as much of the black voting age population as possible to those districts. This agenda was never seriously questioned until after the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Shaw which prompted the County to inquire of the district court concerning the constitutionality of its two race-based districts. See Vera, 517 U.S. at 961, 116 S.Ct. 1941. 38 The fact that other considerations may have played a role in the County's redistricting does not mean that race did not predominate. Race may be shown to have predominated even if, as here: 39 factors other than race are shown to have played a significant role in the precise location and shape of those districts. If the line-drawing process is shown to have been infected by such a deliberate racial purpose, strict scrutiny cannot be avoided simply by demonstrating that the shape and location of the districts can rationally be explained by reference to some districting principle other than race, for the intentional classification of voters by race, though perhaps disguised, is still likely to reflect the impermissible racial stereotypes, illegitimate notions of racial inferiority and simple racial politics that strict scrutiny is designed to smoke out. 40 Shaw v. Hunt, 861 F.Supp. 408, 431 (E.D.N.C.1994), rev'd on other grounds, 517 U.S. 899, 116 S.Ct. 1894, 135 L.Ed.2d 207 (1996). We look now to the role played in the 1992 redistricting by each of the traditional factors.
41 Putnam County's four electoral districts are relatively compact. The district court concluded that this fact militated against a finding that race predominated over this traditional districting factor. The Supreme Court, however, has rejected this conclusion. Miller instructs that bizarreness of shape is not a threshold showing for racial gerrymandering. 20 515 U.S. at 915, 115 S.Ct. 2475. Shape must be considered in conjunction with racial and population densities, id. at 917, 115 S.Ct. 2475, and in this case those factors militate against a finding that compactness trumped race when it came to reapportioning the districts. 42 Intentionally, over 90% of the county's black population was assigned to either District 1 or 2. The feather, smokestack, and pie slice all indicate that when Ms. Meggers was looking for population to shift to bring her deviation into constitutional range, race determined who should be shifted. The fact that the resulting irregularities in natural boundaries are small does not undermine the inevitable conclusion that they are there at all precisely because their racial composition helped achieve the plan's racial goals. See Miller, 515 U.S. at 917, 115 S.Ct. 2475 (such deliberate racial line-drawing supports a finding that race predominated in the redistricting process). 43 Race not only determined who was shifted in the 1992 redistricting process; even more importantly, it also determined who was not. Ms. Meggers could have reduced her almost 11% deviation from equal district population by shifting voters from the overpopulated white districts into the underpopulated contiguous black districts. She chose not to, however, because to do so would have done harm to her [racial] numbers. As a result, the County, which undertook the 1992 redistricting to correct malapportionment, remains significantly malapportioned. The County's commitment to the constitutional mandate of one-person, one-vote was secondary to its primary racial agenda. This the Constitution does not permit. Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 568, 84 S.Ct. 1362; Shaw, 509 U.S. at 642, 113 S.Ct. 2816; Miller, 515 U.S. at 913, 115 S.Ct. 2475.
44 The district court also concluded that the plan elevated communities of interest over race in the redistricting process. It offered this explanation for District 3's pie slice which pulls population out of District 2 and places them into District 3. The district court approved the inclusion of the pie slice in District 3 because it is characterized by fine, old houses and populated by a predominately affluent population, in contrast to the humbler conditions in the urban areas of District Two. The court concluded that, without the pie slice, there would have been an unnatural division of this distinct community of interest. Even if assignment of voters on the basis of socio-economic status is a legitimate, traditional districting principle, which appears unlikely, nothing in the record suggests that this was the reason for carving the pie slice out of District 2. On the other hand, the census tracts make clear that the population in the pie slice was largely white and would have done damage to Ms. Meggers' numbers.
45 Finally, the district court accepted the County's and Ms. Meggers' contention that incumbency was, in fact, the primary consideration in the reapportionment process. While it is undoubtedly true that the County was interested in protecting incumbents, it is clear that racially motivated gerrymandering had a qualitatively greater influence on the drawing of district lines than politically motivated gerrymandering, and that political gerrymandering was accomplished in large part by the use of race as a proxy. Vera, 517 U.S. at 969, 116 S.Ct. 1941. The County sought to protect its two black incumbents by maximizing the black population in their districts. 21 Incumbency protection achieved by using race as a proxy is evidence of racial gerrymandering. Id. at 970, 116 S.Ct. 1941. Furthermore, it is indicative of the sort of racial stereotyping that the Supreme Court has condemned as resembling political apartheid: 46 It reinforces the perception that members of the same racial group — regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live — think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotypes. 47