Supreme Court could end race-based voting districts. Good. They're antiquated. | Opinion
Considering race inherently means discrimination in the sense that you believe skin color is an important factor in vote choice.
A redistricting war between red and blue states has erupted in response to Texas’ new proposed map, prompting Democrats nationwide to go on the offensive.
This isn’t the only reason redistricting is making headlines. The Supreme Court has indicated that it will be considering whether race-based districts are constitutional next term.
The colorblind approach taken by the conservative justices on many other issues, such as college admissions and employment discrimination, indicates that they may be skeptical of race-based districting as well. The Supreme Court should strike down racial considerations in the districting process.
Many states have interpreted the Voting Rights Act to mandate the creation of a specific number of majority-minority districts, which is in tension with the Supreme Court’s precedents on the matter.
It's unconstitutional to consider race when creating district maps
In this case, Louisiana has adopted a new districting map, adding a second majority-Black district to the state. The state is being accused of violating the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court has ordered briefing on, as the order phrased it, “Whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.”
Navigating race in the districting process poses a unique challenge. States cannot create districts based solely on race, for fear of violating the equal protection clause, but they also fear that they will run afoul of the Voting Rights Act if they take a colorblind approach.
However, the Supreme Court may rule that all race-based considerations in districting are unconstitutional, alleviating the burden on states to navigate the narrow space left by these two forces. They would be justified in doing so.
The Supreme Court has made it clear in recent cases that they are skeptical of any policy dealing with group characteristics rather than individuals. Justice Clarence Thomas has called the practice of race-based redistricting in response to general past discrimination “utterly divorced from the sort of ‘specific, identified instances of past discrimination’ that this Court demands to justify a race-based remedy.
Nor is a race-conscious approach reflective of modern times, compared with those at the time of the Voting Rights Act’s passage in 1965. Multiple Supreme Court justices have lamented race-based remedial solutions that have no end point. Some have suggested that race-conscious practices can be employed to address specific injustices in their aftermath, but that such programs must have an end point.
Six decades later, proponents of race-based considerations in the districting process would have these guidelines in place for eternity. It's understandable why explicit mandates based on race might have been a necessary evil in the 1960s, but the systematic discrimination that spurred the need for such requirements is now long in the past.
Race-based districting makes no sense
In Louisiana v. Callais, in particular, the facts are particularly egregious.
In a desperate quest to create an additional majority minority district, Louisiana has created a monstrosity of a district, stretching across the majority of the state’s width and height in order to group together as many Black people as possible.
Situations like these demonstrate how overemphasis on race can lead to the neglect of other factors vital to districting, such as compactness and continuity.
Race should not prevail over other important considerations. A cluster of neighboring counties with similar regional struggles has more in common than two majority-Black cities on opposite sides of a state.
Considering race inherently means discrimination in the sense that you believe skin color is an important factor in vote choice. It should go without saying, but explicit attempts to minimize the impact of minority voters in elections also run afoul of these principles as well.
Race isn’t any more important in districting considerations than any other characteristic that correlates with voting patterns. Districting based on race makes little more sense than grouping together people of a certain income level, education level, age range or any other group that can be thought of as having some form of collective interests.
The assumption that minority groups themselves are a cohesive voting unit is one rooted in past trends, but in a misunderstanding of where the end point of racial progress ought to be. The goal of districting with regard to race is not that each racial group has its own unique form of representation; rather, it is that race, in the end, is no longer a meaningful differentiation in voting patterns.
It is inevitably prejudiced to assume that race is a valuable determining factor in vote choice. There is little reason to believe that a White person put into the exact same upbringing as someone from any specific minority group would have any different voting tendencies. Race may correlate with vote patterns, but it tells you absolutely nothing valuable about an individual. Even if grouping individuals based on race is intended to achieve equal representation, it may run afoul of equal protection.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for Paste BN and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.