Harris v. McCrory: Latent Tensions Between Vote Dilution Injuries and Equal Protection Violations and Their Implications for North Carolina's Redistricting Procedure

Abstract

In Harris v. McCrory, plaintiffs David Harris and Christine Bowser challenge the 2011 North Carolina Redistricting Plan as a racial gerrymander. They assert that the 2011 Plan packs a high concentration of African-American voters into Districts 1 and 12 of North Carolina, thereby diminishing the value of the African-American vote in neighboring districts. On a 2-to-1 decision, the United States District Court for Middle District of North Carolina upheld the plaintiffs’ charge that Districts 1 and 12 unlawfully used racial quotas to determine its district boundaries, and required a new map to be drawn to remedy the racial gerrymanders, resulting in the creation of the 2016 New Contingent Congressional Plan. Yet, designed to maintain the same partisan advantage achieved through the 2011 Plan, the New Contingent Plan also raises concerns about illegitimately perpetuating racially discriminatory methods to achieve partisan ends.

This thesis establishes two working frameworks to examine legitimate and illegitimate uses of race in the North Carolina redistricting plans. The first constitutional framework considers vote dilution injuries established in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and equal protection violations established in the 14th Amendment. The second theoretical framework borrows from Alexander Aleinikoff and Samuel Issacharoff’s rejection of excessive reliance claims, and Heather Gerken’s doctrine of aggregate rights. The thesis also includes a geographical data analysis that examines block-group level demographic data pertaining to congressional districts of the New Contingent Congressional Plan in order to visually represent these racial gerrymanders.

The examination of Harris v. McCrory through a constitutional, theoretical, and geographical framework ultimately has two tasks. First, it seeks to distinguish between three types of race-based districting procedures 1) race-as-a-factor districting to create majority-minority districts 2) racial packing to over-concentrate minority voters in one district and disempower them as a group in remaining districts 3) racial fracturing to disperse minority voters across districts wherein those displaced voters are drowned out by high concentrations of majority voters. Second, these working frameworks must be able to examine, and perhaps even prove, a district boundary’s purpose and motive.

Using a constitutional and theoretical framework supported by a geographical data analysis, this thesis attempts to prove the illegitimacy of both the 2011 Plan and the New Plan on racial gerrymander charges. The ultimate goal of this thesis is for the conclusions reached in its examination of Harris v. McCrory to be applicable to future cases of racial gerrymandering in order to produce a working definition of the legitimate use of race in redistricting that can reconcile the latent tensions between the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause.