Voting Rights

SCSJ Ensures Equal Representation on Guilford County Board of Commissioners On February 7, 2012, SCSJ filed suit on behalf of the NAACP-Greensboro Branch and individual Guilford County voters to ensure equal representation on their county Board of Commissioners. SCSJ’s Complaint alleged the General Assembly’s Guilford County redistricting plan left thousands of residents without a county commissioners, while others received disproportionately large representation. United States Middle District of North Carolina Judge William L. Osteen granted Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction finding the legislation in question caused “unequal representation on the Board of Commissioners… violating… residents’ equal protection rights” in his March 14, 2012 Judge Osteen changed the election schedule to ensure equal representation on the Board, and SCSJ continues to work to rectify further anomalies found in the redistricting plan. Memorandum Opinion is attached.

On February 6, the three judge panel ruled that the statewide redistricting lawsuits in North Carolina will go forward. The judges’ denied in part the State’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit SCSJ filed on behalf of the North Carolina NAACP, Democracy NC, the League of Women Voters, NC A. Philip Randolph Institute and 44 individual voters. The judges also refused to dismiss the redistricting lawsuit brought by Democratic officials and voters. Although the judges’ dismissed some of the plaintiffs’ claims, the case will proceed on the majority of the claims including claims that State House, State Senate and Congressional plans draw racially gerrymandered districts, divide too many counties and split an excessive number of precincts. The judges’ ruling allows claims to go forward against every district challenged by the plaintiffs including Congressional Districts 1, 4, 10 and 12. As the lawsuits move through the courts, SCSJ and the plaintiff organizations are working to minimize voter confusion and problems that may arise during the May primaries.

SCSJ represents the Texas State Conference of NAACP Branches in Texas v. United States, litigation in the federal District Court for the District of Columbia in which the state of Texas is seeking federal preclearance for its Congressional, State House and State Senate redistricting plans. The NAACP is joining with the United States Department of Justice in arguing that these plans were crafted with racially discriminatory intent and will have a retrogressive effect on minority voters. Trial begins on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 and will conclude at the end of the following week, with closing arguments on February 3. The outcome of this trial will be key in what plan is in place for the 2012 elections conducted in Texas this fall. Texas is an incredibly diverse state, and the NAACP stands with all minority voters in resisting the state’s longstanding and egregious attempts to minimize the voting strength of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American voters in Texas.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice has been representing the Texas State Conference of Branches of the NAACP in ongoing litigation over Texas’s statewide redistricting plans. On Friday, November 25, a three-judge panel in Texas ordered the implementation of a court-drawn interim plan for Congressional elections in 2012. This plan corrects almost all of the major problems that the NAACP identified in the state’s enacted plan. In the court-drawn plan, Congressional Districts 9, 18, and 30—districts currently electing the candidates of choice of African-American voters—are not weakened, as they were in the state’s enacted plan. The court-drawn plan respects the cores of the district and does not split significant communities of interest, as the state plan did. The court’s drawing of these districts in a way that respects the integrity of the districts and complies with the Voting Rights Act makes even clearer the discriminatory intent that infected the drawing of minority districts in the state’s plan. In the state’s enacted plan, Texas had purposefully destroyed a Congressional District 25, a multi-ethnic coalition district based in Austin. The state’s plan carved up East Austin, a historically significant African American community that had always been represented by a single representative, into multiple districts, in order to dilute the voting strength of African American voters in that area. The court’s plan retained the core of CD 25, and kept East Austin intact. Finally, the court-drawn plan creates a new African-American opportunity district in Tarrant County, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area. After the 2010 Census, Texas gained 4 Congressional representatives because of population growth of the last decade—population growth that was almost entirely from increases in Latino and African-American population. Despite this fact, the congressional plan that Texas drew created no new African-American opportunity districts and no net increase in Latino opportunity districts. Congressional District 33 is majority-minority, with African-Americans constituting a strong plurality of the citizen voting age population. The drawing of Congressional District 33 is fair and complies with the Voting Rights Act, and will enable the minority community in the Dallas-Fort Worth region to elect a candidate of their choice.

This morning, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. denied a request by Texas for approval of the State's congressional, Texas House and Texas Senate redistricting plans without conducting a trial to determine whether these plans were drawn with the intent or effect of diminishing the ability of minority voters to elect the candidates of their choice. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, on behalf of the Texas State Conference of NAACP Branches and in conjunction with the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the League of United Latin American Citizens, offered briefing and oral argument to the court on November 2, 2011, urging the court not to approve the redistricting plans because the plans are unfair to Black and Latino voters. Because of the Court’s ruling, the state’s enacted redistricting plans for Congress, State House, and State Senate cannot be used for the 2012 elections. A federal district court in San Antonio will now draw interim redistricting plans for 2012 elections. The court in San Antonio has already conducted hearings on those interim plans, in which SCSJ presented information to the court on how to draw plans that would be fair to minority voters.

Today SCSJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of four statewide organizations and 27 individual voters, challenging the newly enacted redistricting plans for the North Carolina State House, State Senate and U.S. Congress. We allege that all three plans “are an intentional and cynical use of race that exceeds what is required to ensure fairness to previously disenfranchised racial minority voters.” In addition to violating the equal protection rights of North Carolina voters on the basis of race, the maps also unfairly create two classes of voters in the state. One class is those who live in split precincts and who will experience delays, confusion and a heightened risk of receiving the wrong ballot. Approximately two million voting age adults in the state (27% of the total voting age population) live in a split precinct. The other class is those voters who do not live in a split precinct and who will not face these problems. African-American voting age adults are 50% more likely than whites to live in a split precinct. The organizational plaintiffs are the North Carolina NAACP, Democracy North Carolina, the North Carolina League of Women Voters and the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute. We seek to overturn the legislature’s unconstitutional packing of black voters. The Complaint is attached below. For a musical explanation of what this case is about, check out this video from ProPublica: http://www.propublica.org/article/video-the-redistricting-song.