oters in the oft-changed and challenged 12th Congressional District are in for another round of debate over what it should look like.
It was born as a snake-like district which ran along Interstate 85 from Gastonia to Durham. Then it was shortened to omit Durham. Then, last year, to include most of
Rowan County and parts of Forsyth and Guilford counties and a larger portion of Mecklenburg.
Each change brought related changes in surrounding districts.
The percentage of blacks in the district dropped from nearly 60 percent to under 40 percent.
U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Democrat and the only representative the district has known,
has been re-elected three times, since he was first elected in 1992. Three of the four times he has been elected, he has faced a different set of voters.
Commenting on the latest and third U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the decade long case, Watt seems resigned to another round of court hearings and possibly,yet
another change in the 12th District, perhaps a return to a 1997 plan drawn by the General Assembly.
"I believe the Supreme Court's decision is an appropriate one and I am gratified that
the Supreme Court reversed the decision by the three-judge panel," Watt said. "However, my constituents and those who live in the 1997 version of the 12th
District should not think that this ends the case."
That plan was thrown out by a
three-judge District Court panel last year, forcing the legislature to hastily draw the current 12th District, which Watt won handily in November.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that the three-judge panel erred in throwing out the 1997 district map without hearing evidence. N.C. state attorneys were
prepared to argue that a political motive and not race drove their decision to draw the 12th to connect the state's urban crescent from Charlotte to Durham.
Duke University professor Robinson Everett has spearheaded the attacks on the 12th, contending race was more a motive than politics and the effort to connect the urban areas was done to gather as
many black voters as possible.
However, according to Bill Gilkenson, a staff attorney for the N.C. Legislative Research Commission, the Supreme Court seems to be approving the new district. The Research Commission
has been responsible for drawing the district maps considered by the state's legislators.
In the opinion released Monday, and written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said that its OK
to carve out a majority black congressional district as long as the motive was political, rather than racial.
In his majority opinion, Thomas said, "a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political
gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if those responsible for drawing the district are conscious of that fact."
The 12th has remained a majority Democratic district.
Gilkenson said Thomas' opinion runs counter to the high court's previous ruling that "if predominant
reason for drawing a funny looking district is to segregate voters by race, that is unconstitutional, unless the state had compelling legitimate reason for doing so."
"But what he is saying here is, if you trying to draw a Democratic district and used the black voters because they were the best Democrats in terms of how they voted, then that's okay," Gilkenson said.
"Exactly how far that would go is the question, I guess. The U.S. Supreme Court has said the old 12th was unconstitutional as a racial gerrymandering. Thomas voted for that. He's making a
distinction. It seems he is undercutting that position, although I sure he doesn't think so."
"Thomas said you could explain the way the district was drawn by political motivation and since both
of those contentions - plaintiff's claim that it was racial and the state's that it was political - were out there and seemed to be supported by evidence that was credible, then summary judgement was
appropriate," Gilkenson said.
Justice John Paul Stevens agreed with the result, but added an additional caveat in a dissenting opinion.
Stevens argued that since in the south whites often register as Democrats, but vote Republican, the only way to ensure a Democratic district was to include a majority of blacks.
"If you look for registered voters who are Democratic and put them in a district, that won't create a district that votes Democratic," Gilkenson said. "You have to look at how people vote. Black
registered Democrats have been more likely to vote Democratic. Stevens says that's something this court has recognized in the past and the appeals court did not."
The high court said that since there was a point of contention as to whether the N.C. legislature drew the 12th to elect a Democrat or, as Everett argues, to elect a black Democrat, the lower court should
have heard arguments before throwing out the 1997 district lines.
As Watt expects, the case is not over and will likely include at least a hearing on the 1997 district lines.
But the wording of Thomas' ruling, seeming to permit a majority black district drawn for a political purpose leaves unclear just how far the legislators can go and cast an uncertainty over the eventual
outcome of the case.
"I am confident that when the case is tried the three-judge panel will conclude that the state
legislature's interest in creating an urban congressional district was proper and that no improper racial motivation was responsible for this decision," Watt said. "I also hope that the litigation about the
districts drawn on the basis of the 1990 census can be concluded before the state has to start drawing districts based on the year 2000 census."
That will likely mean yet another 12th and a new group of voters for Watt to woo.
