The Supreme Court decided that the Republican legislature in North Carolina impermissibly considered the racial rather than the partisan makeup of the state's population when drawing congressional districts. The Supreme Court struck down two North Carolina congressional districts on Monday, ruling that lawmakers had violated the Constitution by relying too heavily on race in drawing them, in a decision that could affect many voting maps, generally in the South. Republicans in the North Carolina legislature denied that race was the predominant factor in redrawing the boundaries of the two districts under review. In one of them, though, they said, they had made some use of race. The lawmakers said they had tried to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which in some settings requires that black voters be concentrated in numbers sufficient to provide them an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. But critics of the voting map said the legislature was...(Read Full Post)