Gary Bartlett, Executive Director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections et al. v. Dwight Strickland et al. (556 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 9, 2009 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 556 U.S. 1 · 129 S. Ct. 1231
- Decided
- March 9, 2009
- Term
- October Term 2008
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
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. 487, 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? I The ease 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…
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