SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NORTH CAROLINA, et al.
v. SANDRA
LITTLE COVINGTON, et al.
on appeal from the united states district
court for the middle district of north carolina
No. 16–1023. Decided June 5, 2017
Per Curiam.
The North Carolina General Assembly redrew state
legislative districts in 2011 to account for population changes
revealed by the 2010 census. In May 2015, several registered North
Carolina voters (here called plaintiffs) brought this action in the
U. S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina,
alleging that 28 majority-black districts in the new plan were
unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The District Court ruled for
the plaintiffs in August 2016, holding that race was the
predominant factor in the design of each challenged district, and
that in none was that use of race “supported by a strong basis in
evidence and narrowly tailored to comply with [the Voting Rights
Act].” 316 F. R. D. 117, 176 (MDNC 2016).[
1]* The court declined to require changes in
time for the then-impending November 2016 election, but ordered the
General Assembly to redraw the map before North Carolina holds any
future elections for that body. See App. to Juris. Statement
148–149.
Three weeks after the November 2016 election,
the District Court ordered additional relief. In addition to
setting a March 2017 deadline for the General Assembly’s drawing of
new districts, the court ordered that “[t]he term of any legislator
elected in 2016” from a district later modified by that remedial
plan “shall be shortened to one year” (rather than the regular
two).
Id., at 203. Those legislators would then be replaced
by new ones, to be chosen in court-ordered special elections in the
fall of 2017. The legislators elected in those special elections,
too, were then to “serve a one year term.”
Id., at 204.
Finally, in order to make this regime workable, the court also
suspended provisions of the North Carolina Constitution requiring
prospective legislators to reside within a district for one year
before they may be elected to represent it. See
id., at 203
(citing N. C. Const., Art. II, §§6–7). To explain why these
measures were warranted, the court stated: “While special elections
have costs, those costs pale in comparison to the injury caused by
allowing citizens to continue to be represented by legislators
elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander.” App. to Juris. Statement
200.
North Carolina appealed the District Court’s
remedial order to this Court, and we granted a stay pending appeal.
See 580 U. S. ___ (2017). The State now contends that “the
remedial order should be vacated for the simple reason that the
district court failed to meaningfully weigh any equitable
considerations.” Juris. Statement 22. We share that assessment and
now vacate the order.
Relief in redistricting cases is “‘fashioned in
the light of well-known principles of equity.’”
Reynolds v.
Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 585 (1964) . A district court
therefore must undertake an “equitable weighing process” to select
a fitting remedy for the legal violations it has identified,
NAACP v.
Hampton County Election Comm’n, 470
U. S. 166, 183, n. 36 (1985) , taking account of “‘what is
necessary, what is fair, and what is workable,’”
New York v.
Cathedral Academy, 434 U. S. 125, 129 (1977) . And in
the context of deciding whether to truncate existing legislators’
terms and order a special election, there is much for a court to
weigh. Although this Court has never addressed whether or when a
special election may be a proper remedy for a racial gerrymander,
obvious considerations include the severity and nature of the
particular constitutional violation, the extent of the likely
disruption to the ordinary processes of governance if early
elections are imposed, and the need to act with proper judicial
restraint when intruding on state sovereignty. We do not suggest
anything about the relative weight of these factors (or others),
but they are among the matters a court would generally be expected
to consider in its “balancing of the individual and collective
interests” at stake.
Swann v.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd.
of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971) .
Rather than undertaking such an analysis in this
case, the District Court addressed the balance of equities in only
the most cursory fashion. As noted above, the court simply
announced that “[w]hile special elections have costs,” those
unspecified costs “pale in comparison” to the prospect that
citizens will be “represented by legislators elected pursuant to a
racial gerrymander.” App. to Juris. Statement 200. That minimal
reasoning would appear to justify a special election in
every racial-gerrymandering case—a result clearly at odds
with our demand for careful case-specific analysis. For that
reason, we cannot have confidence that the court adequately
grappled with the interests on both sides of the remedial question
before us. And because the District Court’s discretion “was barely
exercised here,” its order provides no meaningful basis for even
deferential review.
Winter v.
Natural Resources Defense
Council, Inc., 555 U. S. 7, 27 (2008) .
For these reasons, we vacate the District
Court’s remedial order and remand the case for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
