Supreme Court Case on North Carolina Redistricting

               In 2014, a North Carolina Supreme Court Case came to a controversial end.  The Supreme Court voted that state legislators did not consider race too heavily when drawing and declaring the district lines, in which many people considered a bad race-based case of gerrymandering.  The Republicans secured 10 of the 13 congressional seats from North Carolina after their re-drawing of the district lines in North Carolina.  The case was taken to the Supreme Court on grounds that the Republicans aimed to draw lines in order to make sure minorities’ opinion could be less powerful. 

                

               The Supreme Court made a decision recently based on the recent outcomes of another case, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus vs. Alabama.  This case also concerned legislators drawing voting lines to diminish the power of the black and minority votes in Alabama.  The case overturned a ruling by a lower court saying that the drawing of the district lines was “legally erroneous”.  This means that the court agreed that the act was wrong but it was legal the way in which they performed the act.  The current Supreme Court voted that the North Carolina Supreme Court should go back and reconsider the decision based on recent findings in the Alabama case also involving the drawing of district lines involving race. 

                The decision to give the power back to a lower court was a very conservative decision to make it possible for them to not make a true decision on it.  It was a clear example of judicial restraint as the court did not go out and change anything.  The courts could have made an example of the North Carolina legislative lines and made sure nobody else would do it, but instead they made a decision for it to be reexamined by a lower court.  Also, the court really did not use strict or loose constructionist methods when making this decision, they just decided whether or not they wanted to vote on it.  No constitutional rights or privileges were impacted or taken into consideration through this process to get to the decision.  The Supreme Court made a smart decision to put the power in the lower courts in a lower courts hands in order to move on to other cases like the cases on gay rights that are currently circulating through the highest court in America.       

Sources:

http://www.wral.com/supreme-court-orders-review-of-north-carolina-redistricting/14593190/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/supreme-court-redistricting-_n_7100122.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-revives-challenge-to-north-carolina-redistricting-1429541094