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 Robinson Everett has challenged both his state and the federal government over redistricting.CLEMENS KALISCHER |
Robinson Everett '48, J.D. '50, admits it himself: it was partly his lack of expertise which helped him litigate one of the most significant decisions in recent Supreme Court history. Everett led the challenge to North Carolina's oddly shaped First and Twelfth Congressional Districts as racial gerrymanders--districts that seemed to abandon what Everett thought were constitutionally required standards of geographical compactness. Drawing minority-controlled voting districts was a standard interpretation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Everett, however, had not kept up with voting rights legislation for 25 years. In fact, when the Justice Department reviewed North Carolina's plan, based on the 1990 census, it ordered the state to draw two instead of the proposed one majority African-American district.
But Everett did have some experience in fighting North Carolina's districting plans. In 1966, he had successfully represented his friend Ruth Shaw in an attack on a district designed to preserve a Democratic party incumbent's seat. In that case, the federal district court ordered the state to redraw its districts by considering instead compactness, contiguousness, and community of interests. A quarter century as a Duke University law professor, chief judge of the Court of Military Appeals, and owner of three local TV stations, followed before Everett saw another state redistricting plan, based on the 1990 census, in the paper. Everett's mother, the first woman ever to argue and win a case in the North Carolina Supreme Court, passed away at about the same time, and Ruth Shaw was at the funeral. "When I saw Ruth, I brought up the redistricting issue," he says. "Nineteen sixty-six seemed to be happening all over again."
Everett assembled the rest of his plaintiffs, including his son, his secretary, and a colleague at Duke--the "fabulous five" as he calls them--and went to work, suing both the federal and state governments. Shaw v. Hunt (as the case is now known) was to have a setback almost immediately. In April 1991, the District Court of Eastern North Carolina ruled 2 to 1 that the plaintiffs had no standing. "I even heard that those who were sophisticated in voting-rights litigation were laughing at us," he notes. But the case then went to the Supreme Court on appeal and on December 7, 1992, the laughing stopped. The nine justices voted not only that the plaintiffs had standing, but that the state would have to satisfy strict scrutiny: in other words, North Carolina would have to show a compelling state interest in disregarding traditional redistricting concerns in order to justify the so-called "spaghetti strand" and the "bug splatter" districts.
Both political parties now took a keener interest in the suit, with the Republican Party funding Everett's side and the Justice Department aiding the state. Despite the lineup of liberals versus conservatives, Everett objects when people see the issue as part of a political platform. "Since I've been a lifelong registered Democrat, many people are surprised when they hear what side of the issue I'm on," he says. Instead, Everett says his commitment to a race-neutral political environment stems from his ideal, formed in his youth and, he believes, broadly held at that time, of a "color-blind society." He says he would far rather see more African Americans, preferably with strong coalition-building skills, run for office than have redistricting plans that could give them an unfair advantage.
The case went through one more round. Sent back to the lower court, the three-judge panel still found, 2 to 1, that the state had a compelling interest in drawing minority-controlled districts, but the Supreme Court disagreed again. On June 13, 1996, the Court issued its final judgment, voting 5 to 4 that North Carolina draw a new districting plan by April 1997.
The new districting plan is now waiting for pre-clearance from the federal government. It includes one majority black district in the northeastern part of the state and has shortened the Twelfth District somewhat. A disappointed Everett says that he is likely to dispute the plan should it pass muster at the Justice Department. After a five-year professional commitment, a substantial financial one as well, and a favorable decision by the country's highest court, the redistricting plan, as Everett sees it, still "has a racial theme." "To use the Supreme Court's term," he says, "it is 'the fruit of the poisoned tree.'"
~ Daniel Delgado