Supreme Court divided over Virginia redistricting case and question of racial discrimination

By Robert Barnes March 18 at 4:49 PM

The Supreme Court appeared splintered Monday about a Republican-drawn plan for legislative districts in Virginia that a lower court said discriminated against black voters.

Several justices wondered whether the case was properly before the Supreme Court. One seemed to want a delay that would effectively leave the current map in place for this fall’s election. Another said any gerrymandering by the state’s then dominant Republicans might have been a reaction to a fear of getting “hammered” by the Democrats for not creating minority districts.

The only thing clear by the end of the hour-long argument was the case’s importance, not just for Virginia but for the precedent it might set for other states.

The Supreme Court has already considered the 2011 legislative map once. It told a lower court to consider whether some of the districts for the Virginia House of Delegates were racially gerrymandered, by grouping black voters together in a way that left white candidates able to prevail elsewhere. As a practical matter, such a result would benefit Republicans.

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