A Supreme Court majority on Monday appeared to lean in favor of Democrats in Virginia and North Carolina seeking to rein in what they call racial gerrymandering by Republican-controlled legislatures in those states. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is likely to hold the deciding vote, said he was troubled that Republican leaders drew new election maps by moving more black voters into districts that already had a majority of African American residents and usually favored black candidates. Civil rights lawyers and Democrats have contended these “packed” districts have the effect of diluting or weakening the political power of black and Latino voters in other districts and statewide. “I have problems with that,” Kennedy said, suggesting he would question such districts if the “tipping point, the principal motivating factor was race.”
If the court’s majority agrees, the ruling would put states, counties and cities on notice that they may not concentrate more black and Latino voters into districts that already routinely elect minority representatives.
In Virginia, Republican lawmakers decided that each of the 12 districts that currently elect black candidates must maintain at least a 55% black voting population. And in North Carolina, Republican leaders moved tens of thousands of black voters in the Greensboro area into a district that had regularly elected a black Democrat to Congress.
Full Article: Supreme Court appears in favor of ruling against racial gerrymandering in GOP-controlled states – Baltimore Sun.