By The Editors

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Overview of U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling in Bartlett v Strickland

The Court issued a ruling Monday in Bartlett v Strickland, a case involving an interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”). Section 2, which prohibits vote dilution and other voting discrimination on account of race, is designed to ensure enforcement of the 15^th Amendment. In this North Carolina case, the State argued that compliance with Section 2 of the VRA required the state to deviate from certain redistricting criteria in order to preserve an opportunity district that was less than 40% Black but one in which Black voters formed coalitions with crossover voters to elect the minority candidate of choice. The Court decided that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not require the drawing of districts in which racial minorities would make up less than 50 percent of the voting age population of the district. While officials remain free to draw or have discretion to create these coalition districts, the Court’s ruling establishes that these districts are not required by Section 2, and thus cannot be defended on that basis in most circumstances. The decision could have a significant impact in the post-2010 redistricting cycle.

Even as the Court announced a stringent standard that must be met by litigants in future Section 2 cases, Justice Kennedy, in his plurality opinion which was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, recognized the incomplete state of America’s efforts to eradicate entrenched voting discrimination, observing that: “racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history. Much remains to be done to ensure that citizens of all races have equal opportunity to share and participate in our democratic processes and tradition …”

• Read the Court’s ruling (PDF)
• Read the March 10 article by Adam Liptak in the Times