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1 1 (March 14, 2019)

handle is hein.crs/govzih0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional SResearch Service Racial Gerrymandering: Past Cases and the Supreme Court's Upcoming Decision in Bethune-Hill II March 14, 2019 On March 18, 2019, the Supreme Court is set to hear argument in Virginia House ofDelegates v. Bethune- Hill (Bethune-Hill II), a case raising the question of whether the Commonwealth of Virginia violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by using race as the determinative factor in drawing its state legislative map. This case is not the Court's first encounter with Virginia's legislative map. Barely two years ago, the Court issued its decision in Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board ofElections (Bethune- Hill), where it reviewed a district court's determination that all of the challenged districts passed constitutional muster. Holding that the lower court had applied an incorrect legal standard for all but one of the challenged districts, the Court remanded the case for reconsideration. During the March 18 argument, the Court will review the district court's second decision, which concluded that all of the challenged districts are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. While Bethune-Hill I only concerns Virginia's legislative map, it illustrates the challenges governments often face in determining the manner in which race may (or must) be taken into account in drawing district maps. This Sidebar begins by providing an overview of the Supreme Court's racial gerrymandering jurisprudence, before discussing the Court's decision in Bethune-Hill land the issues currently before the Court in Bethune-Hill II. The Sidebar concludes by exploring possible implications of the Court's upcoming decision on racial gerrymandering. The Supreme Court's Racial Gerrymandering Jurisprudence Racial gerrymandering claims are primarily based on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. That provision prohibits governments from passing laws that differentiate between persons on the basis of race without a compelling justification. The Supreme Court first recognized a claim of racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause in its 1993 decision of Shaw v. Reno. That case involved North Carolina's efforts to redraw its congressional map after the 1990 census, which entitled it to an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. North Carolina's revised congressional map included two districts composed of a majority of black voters. These districts, however, were unusually shaped, winding in snakelike fashion across vast swaths of the state and branching off with finger- Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10273 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress