Gerrymandering - National Examples of Gerrymandering - United States - Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965

After Reconstruction and the granting of citizenship and suffrage to freedmen, white Democrats regained power in state legislatures across the South by 1877, in part through insurgents' violence around elections to disrupt and suppress black voting. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890, state legislatures developed new constitutions or amendments through the early 1900s, with provisions to make voter registration and elections more complicated, in an effort to suppress black voting. Measures included poll taxes, more complicated or lengthier residency requirements, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. These were designed for and effectively succeeded in disfranchising most African Americans and many poor whites in southern states, markedly reducing overall voting. White primaries also excluded minorities. White Democrats effectively controlled all the seats apportioned to the region based on total population. In areas where some African-American and other minorities succeeded in registering, some states created districts that were gerrymandered to reduce the voting impact of minorities. Minorities were effectively deprived of their franchise into the 1960s.

With the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, federal enforcement and protections of suffrage for all citizens were enacted. Gerrymandering for the purpose of reducing the political influence of a racial or ethnic minority group was prohibited. Poll taxes for federal elections were prohibited by ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment in 1964, and a later Supreme Court case struck down poll taxes as a prerequisite for any election. Gerrymandering for political gain has remained possible under the Constitution.

After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, some states created "majority-minority" districts. This practice, also called "affirmative gerrymandering", was supposed to redress historic discrimination and ensure that ethnic minorities would gain some seats and representation in government. Since the 1990s, however, gerrymandering based solely on racial data has been ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment, first in Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequently in Miller v. Johnson (1995).

The constitutionality of using racial considerations to create districts remains difficult to assess, despite past injustices. In Hunt v. Cromartie (1999), the Supreme Court approved a racially focused gerrymandering of a congressional district on the grounds that the definition was not pure racial gerrymandering but instead partisan gerrymandering, which is constitutionally permissible. With the increasing racial polarisation of parties in the South in the U.S. as conservative whites move from the Democratic to the Republican Party, gerrymandering may become partisan and also achieve goals for ethnic representation.

In a few circumstances the use of goal-driven district boundaries may be used for positive social goals. When the state legislature considered representation for Arizona's Native American reservations, they thought each needed their own House member, because of historic conflicts between the Hopi and Navajo nations. Since the Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation, the legislature created an unusual district configuration that features a fine filament along a river course several hundred miles in length to attach two Navajo regions, Arizona's 2nd congressional district.

The California state legislature created a congressional district that extends over a narrow coastal strip for several miles. It ensures that a common community of interest will be represented, rather than having portions of the coastal areas be split up into districts extending into the interior, with domination by inland concerns.