Thornburg v. Gingles
| Thornburg v. Gingles | |
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| Argued December 4, 1985 Decided June 30, 1986 |
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| Full case name | Lacy Thornburg, Attorney General of North Carolina, et al. v. Ralph Gingles, et al. |
| Citations | 478 U.S. 30 (more)
106 S. Ct. 2752; 92 L. Ed. 2d 25; 1986 U.S. LEXIS 121; 54 U.S.L.W. 4877; 4 Fed. R. Serv. 3d (Callaghan) 1082
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| Prior history | Gingles v. Edmisten, 590 F.Supp. 345 (EDNC 1984). |
| Holding | |
| The inquiry into the existence of vote dilution caused by submergence in a multimember district is district specific. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens (parts I, II, III-A, III-B, IV-A, V); Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens (part III-C); White (part IV-B) |
| Concurrence | White |
| Concurrence | O'Connor, joined by Burger, Powell, Rehnquist |
| Concur/dissent | Stevens, joined by Marshall, Blackmun |
| Laws applied | |
| Voting Rights Act § 2 | |
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court case in which a unanimous Court found that "the legacy of official discrimination ... acted in concert with the multimember districting scheme to impair the ability of ... cohesive groups of black voters to participate equally in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice." The ruling invalidated districts of the North Carolina General Assembly and led to more single-member districts in state legislatures.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits any jurisdiction from implementing a "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right ... to vote on account of race," color, or language minority status. The Supreme Court has allowed private plaintiffs to sue to enforce this prohibition. In City of Mobile v. Bolden (1980), the Supreme Court held that as originally enacted in 1965, Section 2 simply restated the Fifteenth Amendment and thus prohibited only those voting laws that were intentionally enacted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose. Congress responded by passing an amendment to the Civil Rights Act which President Ronald Reagan signed into law on June 29, 1982. Congress's amended Section 2 to create a "results" test, which prohibits any voting law that has a discriminatory effect irrespective of whether the law was intentionally enacted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose. The 1982 amendments provided that the results test does not guarantee protected minorities a right to proportional representation.
When determining whether a jurisdiction's election law violates this general prohibition, courts have relied on factors enumerated in the Senate Judiciary Committee report associated with the 1982 amendments ("Senate Factors"), including:
The report indicates not all or a majority of these factors need to exist for an electoral device to result in discrimination, and it also indicates that this list is not exhaustive, allowing courts to consider additional evidence at their discretion.
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