Bartlett v. Strickland
The Supreme Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act does not require states to draw so-called 'crossover' election districts — districts where a minority group makes up less than half the voters but could still elect its preferred candidate with help from majority voters who cross over to support that candidate.
The decision sets a bright-line rule: a minority group must make up more than 50% of a district's voting-age population before Section 2 of the Act can require that district to be drawn, narrowing the kinds of districts that count toward a state's voting-rights obligations.
“Only when a geographically compact group of minority voters could form a majority in a single-member district has the first Gingles requirement been met.”
The core holding setting the 50% threshold for Voting Rights Act claims.
How it got here: A North Carolina trial court sided with state officials who split a county to draw a crossover district; the state supreme court reversed, and the officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
North Carolina's constitution barred the legislature from splitting counties when drawing state legislative districts. In redrawing House District 18 in 2003, the General Assembly split Pender County anyway, saying that doing so let Black voters, who had fallen below 50% of the district's voting-age population, combine with white crossover voters to elect their preferred candidate — something officials argued the Voting Rights Act required.
The question before the Court
Can the Voting Rights Act force a state to draw an election district where a racial minority makes up less than half the voters, just because that minority could still elect its favored candidate with help from crossover voters?
The Court's answer
No — the Court held that Section 2 does not require states to draw 'crossover' districts, where minority voters make up less than 50% of the voting-age population but could still elect their preferred candidate with help from majority voters who cross over. The Court adopted a bright-line rule: a minority group must be able to constitute more than 50% of a district's voting-age population before Section 2 can require that district to be drawn.
The Court reasoned that minority voters in crossover districts have no better or worse opportunity to elect a candidate than any other group with the same voting strength, since they cannot win without outside support. It also worried a looser standard would force courts into speculative political predictions and raise constitutional concerns about race-based districting. The ruling does not stop states from choosing to draw crossover districts voluntarily — it only holds that Section 2 does not demand it.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
State officials drawing legislative and congressional maps now know courts require a minority group to exceed 50% of a district's voting-age population before Section 2 obligates them to draw that district. This affects North Carolina's House map directly and limits, nationwide, how much weight coalition-style districts can carry toward satisfying federal voting-rights requirements.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving the legal question nationwide, though it leaves North Carolina's map itself already ordered redrawn by the state supreme court. States remain free to voluntarily draw crossover districts as a matter of policy choice, but cannot claim the Voting Rights Act compels them to. Future disputes will center on whether districts meet the 50% threshold and on the other Gingles preconditions, including how courts should treat intentional discrimination, a question the Court left open here.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not decide whether states may voluntarily choose to draw crossover districts, does not address districts formed by coalitions of two minority groups, and does not resolve how intentional discrimination against a minority group would affect the analysis — the Court expressly said its holding does not apply to such cases.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, would have gone further and rejected any vote-dilution claim under Section 2 regardless of a district's minority population, arguing the statute's text only covers direct barriers to voting like registration rules, not district-line disputes. He would discard the entire Gingles framework as having no basis in the statute's text.
Dissent — Justice Souter
“I would hold that the answer in law as well as in fact is sometimes yes: a district may be a minority-opportunity district so long as a cohesive minority population is large enough to elect its chosen candidate when combined with a reliable number of crossover voters from an otherwise polarized majority.”Souter's central objection that crossover districts should count under the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Souter argued that Section 2 should recognize crossover districts as minority-opportunity districts whenever a cohesive minority population, combined with a reliable number of crossover voters, could elect its preferred candidate. He contended the plurality's 50% rule contradicts real-world voting patterns and would force North Carolina to pack Black voters into fewer, more concentrated districts, undermining the Act's goals.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg joined Justice Souter's dissent and added that the plurality's reading of Section 2 is hard to justify and undercuts the statute's purpose. She suggested the decision effectively invites Congress to step in and clarify the law's proper meaning.
Dissent — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer joined Justice Souter's dissent in full but wrote separately to challenge the plurality's claim that a 50% threshold is administratively superior. He proposed an alternative 2-to-1 ratio test comparing minority population to needed crossover votes, arguing it better reflects actual voting behavior while remaining workable for courts.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the three-part threshold test from Thornburg v. Gingles that plaintiffs (or, as here, state officials defending a map) must clear before a court even considers a Section 2 violation: the minority group must be large and compact enough to form a majority in a single-member district, politically cohesive, and facing a majority that votes as a bloc against its preferred candidate.
- The Court distinguished three types of districts: 'majority-minority' districts where the minority is over 50%, 'influence' districts where the minority can affect but not control an outcome, and 'crossover' districts where the minority is under 50% but can win with help from majority voters who cross over.
- The Court reasoned that in a crossover district, the minority group standing alone has no better or worse chance of electing its candidate than any other group with the same relative voting strength, because it cannot win purely on its own votes — it needs outside help just like any political coalition would.
- The Court found that treating crossover districts as satisfying the first Gingles threshold would create tension with the third Gingles requirement, since a district defined by cooperative majority crossover voting is hard to square with a finding that the majority votes as a bloc to defeat the minority's choice.
- The Court also invoked the practical need for a clear, administrable rule, warning that a looser standard would force judges to make speculative predictions about voter behavior and would risk raising serious constitutional concerns about excessive use of race in redistricting.
- The Court concluded that only when a minority group could form a numerical majority in a compact single-member district has the first Gingles requirement been satisfied, so Section 2 did not require North Carolina to split Pender County to create District 18.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Thornburg v. Gingles (478 U.S. 30)
Clarifies and narrows the first Gingles precondition to require a minority population over 50%, ruling out crossover-district claims.
Distinguishes Georgia v. Ashcroft (539 U.S. 461)
Says the different question under Section 5 of the Act, involving past versus present opportunity, doesn't control the Section 2 analysis here.