Miller v. Johnson

Miller v. Johnson
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 20, 1995 Decided June 29, 1995
Full case name	Zell Miller v. Davida Johnson
Citations	515 U.S. 900 (more) 115 S. Ct. 2475
Prior history	On appeal from U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Together with No. 94-797, Abrams et al. v. Johnson et al., and No. 94-929, United States v. Johnson et al., also on appeal from the same court.
Holding
Georgia's congressional redistricting plan violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas
Concurrence	O'Connor
Dissent	Stevens
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, Breyer, Souter (except as to Part III-B)
Laws applied
Equal Protection Clause

Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning "affirmative gerrymandering/racial gerrymandering", where racial minority-majority electoral districts are created during redistricting to increase minority Congressional representation.

Background

Only one of Georgia's ten congressional districts was primarily African American between 1980 and 1990. According to the 1990 decennial census, Georgia's black population of 27% entitled blacks to an additional eleventh congressional seat. This prompted Georgia's General Assembly to re-draw the state's congressional districts. After the Justice Department denied several of the Assembly's proposed new districts, the Assembly created an additional majority-black district through an eleventh district. However the district lacked any sort of organic structure, and was deemed a "geographic monstrosity" because it extended 6,784.2 square miles from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean. The case was brought to court by white voters in the Eleventh Congressional District of the state of Georgia.

Question Before the Supreme Court

Is racial gerrymandering of the congressional redistricting process a violation of the Equal Protection Clause?

Decision of the Court

Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for the Court. Ruling against the district, the Court declared the district unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the interpretation in Shaw v. Reno (1993). The court noted that in some instances, "a reapportionment plan may be so highly irregular and bizarre in shape that it rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to segregate voters based on race." Applying the rule laid down in Shaw v. Reno requires strict scrutiny whenever race is the "overriding, predominant force" in the redistricting process.

See also

• Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003): Georgia State Senate redistricting case
• Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964): Earlier Georgia congressional redistricting case
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 515

References

• Text of Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995) is available from:  Findlaw  LII