BY JOAN PALTRINERI
GREENSBORO, North Carolina - On June 13 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional the recently created 12th Congressional District in North Carolina, a majority Black voting district. District 12 was created after the 1990 census in an attempt to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Court's 5-4 decision also invalidated three districts in Texas that are predominately Black and Chicano.

The case was brought by Robinson Everett and four other white residents of Durham, North Carolina. Everett, a Duke University law professor, called the district "a quota system for Black representatives," which he claimed violated the rights of voters who are white.

The court issued this ruling as a series of racist arson attacks on Black churches have continued to spread across the South. Black ministers charge little has been done by the federal government to protect Black communities during the one-and-half years of church burnings. With this decision the court has continued to chip away at the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The North Carolina 12th District is the eighth such district to be invalidated by a federal court. Others are in Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and Florida.

A 1991 redistricting plan by the North Carolina state legislature had been rejected by the U.S. Justice Department on the grounds that it denied representation to Blacks. Only one congressional district was majority Black, although Blacks constitute 22 percent of the state's population. The Justice Department ordered the creation of a second majority-Black district.

State Republicans proposed a 200-mile-long district in the southern part of the state that would favor their electoral plans. Democrats proposed and passed an alternative 160-mile district going north and south through the center of the state. This plan protected the seats of Democratic representatives. In the 1992 elections, Democrats who are Black were elected in both majority Black districts, becoming the first Blacks elected to Congress from North Carolina since 1901.

The Justice Department had reviewed North Carolina's reapportionment under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The act was originally passed in 1965 and renewed in 1970 and 1982. It was one of the central conquests of the civil rights movement, which overthrew the system of legal segregation in the South known as Jim Crow.

The passage of the act enabled the federal government to intervene to prevent gerrymandering and other practices that made it difficult or impossible for Blacks to vote, get on the ballot, or win election to public office. In many cases new districts were created ending a situation of whites-only control that had existed for almost a century.

The Voting Rights Act outlawed discrimination in voting requirements and provided federal registrars to guarantee equal rights. It banned literacy tests, and, with later amendments, covered such issues as ballots in languages other than English.

Another provision called for Justice Department preapproval of all changes in election-related laws in areas where discrimination had occurred. This covers nine southern states and parts of 13 others that include northern cities such as New York.

Before the act's approval, there were 200 Black elected officials - for local, state, and federal offices - nationwide. By 1993, that figure exceeded 8,000, half of them in the South.

In the years following the passage of the Act, local governments came up with all kinds of ways to dodge the effects of the law. Such practices included abolishing elective offices altogether when Blacks had a chance of winning or withholding information necessary for voting or running for office.

In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled that every action not prohibited in the Voting Rights Act would be covered by the law, which it said "should be given the broadest possible scope. But in 1992, the court voted to limit the scope of the act in a ruling based on a lawsuit filed by elected Black officials from Alabama.

The court's recent decision is expected to lead to more challenges. Last year a federal judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, threw out Mecklenburg County's commissioner and school board districts. The case is on appeal and a decision is expected next month. The suit was brought by Jack Daly, Republican nominee for State Auditor, who stated, "There's no question that there's going to be just a groundswell of litigation, and if I have anything to do with it, a number of suits are going to be filed this summer in every urban county of the state."

William Rehnquist, writing for the Supreme Court majority stated that North Carolina's 12th Congressional district was illegal racial gerrymandering because it allowed race to be the "dominant and controlling" factor in its creation. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in concurring with the majority decision, wrote that the 12th district with "The bizarre shape and non- compactness... bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid." Gerrymandering is not new. In fact, it is routinely used by the Democratic and Republican parties to divide up election districts to give themselves an electoral advantage.

Many of the districts made up of predominantly white voters in North Carolina have unusual shapes. But the Justices only found District 12, which is made up of 53 percent Black voters, to have an unconstitutionally "bizarre shape."

Pamela Karlan, a voting rights expert at the University of Virginia law school pointed out that while the court allows gerrymandering for a variety of reasons, it now expressly forbids it as a means of boosting minority representation. "If you draw districts with 400 sides to elect a conservative Republican or a white Democrat, that's fine, that's traditional politics," Karlan said. "But you can't use the same for Blacks and Hispanics." What happens next will decided by a three-judge district court panel, which will rule within 21 days whether to keep the lines as is for now, or rush to draw up a new plan in time for the fall elections.  
 
 
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