Jurisdictional statement - About Redistricting - Loyola Law School

22
districts to minimize black electoral influence and
segregating the political parties by race. Because the
lower court failed to understand the legal principles
involved, it failed to apply the proper level of scrutiny,
or allocate the burdens of proof and production
when properly assessing these claims.
Redistricting laws are not insulated from the kind
of constitutional scrutiny this Court applies anytime
race is a factor in the enactment of laws. See, e.g.,
Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. at 905-07 (noting that
“[w]e explained in Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900,
904 (1995) that a racially gerrymandered districting
scheme, like all laws that classify citizens on the
basis of race, is constitutionally suspect.”). Because
the lower court misunderstood this Court’s racial
redistricting cases, it misunderstood this fundamental
principle. The racial redistricting cases permit
race to be used as a factor in redistricting, but only
for remedial purposes made necessary by the VRA’s
requirements. That principle is consistent with the
larger fabric of this Court’s Fourteenth Amendment
jurisprudence. Even when state institutions can
permissibly use race as a factor in decision-making to
advance remedial goals, they nevertheless bear the
burden of showing a genuinely remedial purpose.
See, e.g., City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488
U.S. 469, 493 (1989); Parents Involved in Community
Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701,
720-21 (2007). As Croson noted, “[t]he history of
racial classifications in this country suggests that
blind judicial deference to legislative or executive
pronouncements of necessity has no place in equal
protection analysis.” Id. at 501. But the three-judge
court’s refusal to require any proof from the state
that its intentional use of racial classifications was