The parties worked diligently during discovery and the two-day trial to resolve numerous areas of significant disagreement in their competing plans. The pre-trial proceedings were marked by a succession of amendments to the principal redistricting proposals, with each of the new amended plans incrementally eliminating a complex area of potential conflict.
As a consequence of the admirable efforts of counsel to come to an agreement on many issues, the trial focused primarily on the redistricting proposals of the Hastert and Rosebrook plaintiffs. We are left primarily with the task of determining which of the two proposed plans best meets the goals and criteria, both constitutional and non-constitutional, enumerated by the Supreme Court.
a history of official discrimination relating to minority political participation; the extent of racially polarized voting practices; the extent to which certain voting practices and procedures with discriminatory effects have been employed in the past; the exclusion of the minority group from the candidate slating process; the extent to which the minority group bears the effects of past discrimination in education, employment and health services which hinder their ability to effectively participate in the political process; the use of racial appeals in political campaigns; the extent to which minorities have been elected to office; and the lack of responsiveness by elected officials to particular minority needs.
redistricting differs from other kinds of state decisionmaking in that the legislature always is aware of race when it draws district lines, just as it is aware of age, economic status, religious and political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors.
Shape is relevant not because bizarreness is a necessary element of the constitutional wrong or a threshold requirement of proof, but because it may be persuasive circumstantial evidence that race for its own sake, and not other districting principles, was the legislature's dominant and controlling rationale in drawing its district lines.35
*601 a plaintiff must prove that the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles, including but not limited to compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared interests, to racial considerations.
Legislative reapportionment is primarily a matter for legislative consideration and determination, ... for a state legislature is the institution that is by far the best situated to identify and then reconcile traditional state policies within the constitutionally mandated framework of substantial population equality. Where a legislature has failed to reconcile these conflicting state and federal goals, a federal court is left with the unwelcome obligation of performing in the legislature's stead, while lacking the political authoritativeness that the legislature can bring to the task. In such circumstances, the court's task is inevitably an exposed and sensitive one that must be accomplished circumspectly and in a manner ‘free from any taint of arbitrariness or discrimination.’
Taken together, these three propositions lead to the conclusion that any person, of whatever race, has the right to demand that any governmental actor subject to the Constitution justify any racial classification subjecting that person to unequal treatment under the strictest judicial scrutiny.
This case ... involves the constitutionality of a redistricting plan that created majority-minority districts in a manner that was consistent with traditional redistricting principles, not based solely on race, and not involving extremely irregular boundaries. It involves the question left open by the Court in Shaw.
the Masters did not draw district lines based deliberately and solely on race, with arbitrary distortions of district boundaries. The Masters ... properly looked at race, not as the sole criteria in drawing lines but as one of the many factors to be considered. We agree with the California Supreme Court that the Masters' Report evidences a judicious and proper balancing of the many factors appropriate to redistricting....
To ensure a sufficient Hispanic concentration within the proposed district, both maps shoot rays out from the northwest and southwest enclaves to capture additional Hispanic population.
The ‘geographically compact majority’ and ‘minority political cohesion’ showings are needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single member district, see Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50 n. 17 [106 S.Ct. at 2765 n. 17]. And the ‘minority political cohesion’ and ‘majority bloc voting’ showings are needed to establish that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote by submerging it in a larger white voting population, see Gingles, supra, at 51 [106 S.Ct. at 2766].
Read literally, the Gingles population requirement could be construed to require that the minority group constitute a majority only of the total population in a proposed single-member district. Substantial evidence and common sense, however, dispute this construction.... The threshold requirement roughly measures minority voters' potential to elect candidates of their choice. Because only minorities of voting age can affect this potential, it is logical to assume that the Court intended the majority requirement to mean a voting age majority. Viewed another way, those ineligible to vote have not experienced a dilution of their vote. They are not parties to a Section 2 claim.
In determining whether this order was ‘narrowly tailored,’ we must acknowledge the respect owed a district judge's judgment that specified relief is essential to cure a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. A district court has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future....
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