Zell Miller, et al. v. Davida Johnson et al. (515 U.S. 900)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 29, 1995 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 515 U.S. 900 · 115 S. Ct. 2475
- Decided
- June 29, 1995
- Term
- October Term 1994
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. The constitutionality of Georgia’s congressional redistriet-ing plan is at issue here. In Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993), we held that a plaintiff states a claim under the Equal Protection Clause by alleging that a state redistricting plan, on its face, has no rational explanation save as an effort to separate voters on the basis of race. The question we now decide is whether Georgia’s new Eleventh District gives rise to a valid equal protection claim under the principles announced in Shaw, and, if so, whether it can be sustained nonetheless as narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. I A The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 1. Its central mandate is racial neutrality in governmental decisionmaking. See, e. g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 11 (1967); McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 191-192 (1964); see also Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954). Though application of this imperative raises difficult questions, the basic principle is straightforward: “Racial and ethnic distinctions of any sort are inherently suspect and thus call for the most exacting judicial examination. . . . This perception of racial and ethnic distinctions…
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