WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Monday said Republican legislators in the state of North Carolina illegally used race to draw up congressional districts that would dilute the strength of African-American voters.
In a 5-3 ruling, the top US court agreed with plaintiffs who said that the redrawn electoral boundaries deliberately targeted minority voters to diminish their political power.
“A state may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.
The ruling is important because North Carolina is a “swing state,” one that vacillated between voting for Republicans and Democrats.
African-American voters traditionally support the Democratic Party, while Republicans have an advantage with whites voters.
North Carolina redrew its congressional map in 2011, shortly after Democratic President Barack Obama, a target of the conservative Tea Party movement, lost his majority in the US House of Representatives.
According to The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that submitted a friend-of-the-court brief, the North Carolina state legislature intentionally packed thousands of black voters into two congressional districts where they already consistently elected Democratic candidates.
By raising the populations of voting-age African-Americans in those districts to above 50 percent, “the General Assembly sought to diminish the impact of black voters in other parts of the state,” the Center said.
North Carolina insisted that it made good-faith efforts to abide by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlaws racial discrimination in the US electoral process.
The law requires states to take into account their minority populations — generally prohibiting reducing minority-voting power through redistricting — but not make that the defining principle in drawing up electoral maps.
Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, recently appointed to the top US court by President Donald Trump, did not participate in the decision.
Redrawing electoral maps to gain political advantage — a practice known as gerrymandering — is a long-used tool by US political parties.
The term comes from the name of a 19th-century US vice president, Elbridge Gerry, who as governor of Massachusetts carved up electoral districts into what looked like a salamander. The press dubbed the map The Gerry-mander.
US Supreme Court says North Carolina state sought to dilute black vote
US Supreme Court says North Carolina state sought to dilute black vote
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
