Bartlett v. Stephenson
Chief Justice Rehnquist, acting alone as the justice overseeing emergency requests from that region, refused to pause a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that had struck down the State's 2001 legislative redistricting plan for violating a state constitutional rule against splitting counties.
He found no real chance the full Court would take up the case, and no risk that elections would actually be held under an unapproved map, since the state trial court had already barred using any new plan until federal officials cleared it under the Voting Rights Act.
How it got here: A state trial court enjoined the 2001 plan; the North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed and ordered a new plan; officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
North Carolina officials responsible for running elections asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a state court ruling. The North Carolina Supreme Court had invalidated the State's 2001 state legislative redistricting plan, finding it violated a state constitutional rule barring counties from being split when drawing legislative districts, and had ordered a new plan drawn in time for the 2002 elections.
The question before the Court
Should the U.S. Supreme Court block North Carolina's own courts from throwing out the State's 2001 legislative redistricting maps while the state comes up with a replacement?
Why it matters
North Carolina had to draw new state legislative districts under a court-imposed deadline, with county lines preserved as much as federal voting-rights law allowed. Election officials and candidates faced uncertainty about timing, and the ruling reinforced that federal courts won't casually override a state court's application of its own constitution during redistricting.
What changes now
The stay denial means North Carolina's redistricting process continued under the state court's order: the trial court would determine whether the legislature could still draw a new plan in time for the 2002 elections, or otherwise adopt one itself, with county lines preserved except where federal voting law required otherwise. Any new plan still needed federal preclearance for the 40 covered counties before use. This was not a final ruling on the merits of the underlying dispute.
What this does not decide
The order does not resolve whether North Carolina's "whole county provision" is enforceable or how it should be reconciled with the Voting Rights Act going forward. It only denies emergency relief, finding no imminent risk of elections under an unapproved map and little chance the full Court would take up the underlying dispute.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- A single justice reviewing an emergency stay request applies a demanding standard: a stay is granted only in extraordinary circumstances, and the applicant must first show a reasonable probability that four justices would vote to hear the full case.
- The Chief Justice found that threshold unmet, because the dispute largely turned on how to interpret a single 1981 Department of Justice letter about North Carolina's county-line rule, an issue with little significance beyond this one case.
- He distinguished two prior cases where the Court had stepped in to stop elections from proceeding under maps that had never received required federal approval (preclearance) under the Voting Rights Act, a process where the federal government checks certain states' voting changes for discrimination before they take effect.
- Here, the state trial court had already ordered that no new redistricting plan could be used in the 2002 elections until it received that federal preclearance, so there was no danger of elections occurring under an unapproved map.
- Because no plan was at risk of being used without preclearance, the Chief Justice concluded there were no grounds to justify the extraordinary remedy of a stay.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Lopez v. Monterey County (519 U.S. 9)
Unlike that case, no elections here were about to be held under an unapproved redistricting plan.
Distinguishes Clark v. Roemer (500 U.S. 646)
That case involved actual imminent elections under an unprecleared plan, which was not the situation here.