
Scholarship@WashULaw
Shaw and the City
Document Type
Blog Posting
Language
English (en)
Publication Date
2022
Publication Title
Election Law Blog
Abstract
Under Shaw’s racial gerrymandering cause of action, if race predominates during the redistricting process, then the challenged district must survive strict scrutiny. Shaw claims first emerged in the 1990s as a tool to dismantle majority-minority districts. In the 2010s, Democratic and Black plaintiffs flipped the doctrine on its head and used it against districts that packed Black voters in the South. I’ve predicted in a recent article that, in the 2020 cycle, Democratic Party backed plaintiffs may seek to use Shaw against crossover districts to further spread out minority voters without endangering the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—that is, because Section 2 does not mandate the creation of crossover districts.
Keywords
Redistricting, Voting Rights, Racial Gerrymandering, Shaw v. Reno, Voting Rights Act
Publication Citation
Travis Crum, Shaw and the City, Election Law Blog (Apr. 26, 2022), https://electionlawblog.org/?p=129005
Repository Citation
Crum, Travis, "Shaw and the City" (2022). Scholarship@WashULaw. 719.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_scholarship/719