The US Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Republicans in North Carolina unlawfully took race into consideration when drawing congressional district boundaries, concentrating black voters in a bid to diminish their overall political clout.
The justices upheld a lower court’s February 2016 ruling that threw out two majority-black US House of Representatives districts because Republican lawmakers improperly used race as a factor when redrawing the legislative map after the 2010 census.
The court was unanimous on upholding the ruling on one of the districts and split 5-3 on the other, with three conservatives dissenting.
The decision came in one of a number of lawsuits accusing Republicans of taking steps at the state level to disenfranchise black and other minority voters who tend to back Democratic candidates.
Critics accused Republicans of cramming black voters into what the NAACP civil rights group called “apartheid voting districts” to diminish their voting power and make surrounding districts more white and more likely to support Republicans. Both districts are held by the Democrats.
Of North Carolina’s 13 representatives in the US House, 10 are Republican.
Race can be considered in redrawing boundaries of voting districts only in certain instances, such as when states are seeking to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.
That law protects minority voters and was enacted to address a history of racial discrimination in voting, especially in Southern states.
The Supreme Court has never said legislative districts cannot be mapped based on plainly partisan aims like maximising one party’s election chances.
North Carolina Republicans said one of the two districts was drawn on purely partisan grounds to benefit Republicans at the expense of Democrats, and the other was drawn to comply with the demands of the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when arguments in the case were heard, did not participate in the ruling.
The US Supreme Court yesterday turned away a Republican challenge to a federal campaign finance restriction that prevents political parties from raising unlimited amounts of cash to spend on supporting candidates.
The Republican Party of Louisiana had argued that a provision of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act violates free speech rights under the US Constitution.
But the justices let stand a lower court’s ruling that rejected the Republican challenge. The brief order noted that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch favoured hearing the case.
The conservative-leaning court in recent years has rolled back campaign finance restrictions. In 2010, the court paved the way to unlimited outside spending on elections in a case called FEC v Citizens United that concerned corporate spending.
In 2014, the court struck down limits on the total amount individuals can donate during the federal two-year election cycle. Both those decisions eroded sections of the 2002 law.
The measure is commonly known as the McCain-Feingold law after the two senators who sponsored it, Republican John McCain and Democrat Russ Feingold.
It barred state and local parties from taking unlimited donations for any activities concerning federal elections. Such donations are often called “soft money” because they are unregulated. They were a key target of the 2002 law.
The Supreme Court has previously turned down similar cases challenging party campaign finance restrictions, including one in 2010 just after the Citizens United decision that focused on the national parties and was brought by the Republican National Committee.
