Афроамерикандық дауыс құқығы үшін күрес: «Гомиллион против Лайтфут» ісі

Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that found an electoral district with boundaries created to disenfranchise African Americans violated the Fifteenth Amendment.

After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, activists in the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, had been slowly making progress in registering African American voters, whose numbers on the rolls began to approach those of registered white voters. The city was the location of the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college, and a large Veterans Administration hospital, both staffed entirely by African Americans. African Americans outnumbered whites in the city by a four to one margin, and whites wanted to block the likelihood of being governed by the black majority. White residents lobbied the Alabama legislature to redefine the boundaries of the city. In 1957, without debate and ignoring African American protests, African Americans protested, led by Charles G. Gomillion, a professor at Tuskegee, and community activists mounted a boycott against white owned businesses in the city. Gomillion and others filed suit against the city mayor and other officials, claiming that the act's purpose was discriminatory under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection clause. Judge Frank M. Johnson dismissed the case, ruling that the state had the right to draw boundaries of election districts and jurisdictions. That ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.</blockquote>

The redrawing of the city boundaries had the "unintended effect of uniting Tuskegee Institute's African American intellectuals with the less educated blacks living outside the sphere of the school. Some members of the school's faculty realized that possessing advanced degrees ultimately provided them no different status among the city's white establishment".

"The case showed that all state powers were subject to limitations imposed by the U. S. Constitution; therefore, states were not insulated from federal judicial review when they jeopardized federally protected rights." A districting statute otherwise acceptable, may be invalid because it fences out a racial group so as to deprive them of their pre existing municipal vote. Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960). A districting plan may create multimember districts perfectly acceptable under equal population standards, but invidiously discriminatory because they are employed 'to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial or political elements of the voting population. After the Mobile decision held that claims under §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required intent because the 15th amendment cases required it, an effects standard was added by the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act allowing plaintiffs to establish a §2 violation if they could prove that the standard, practice, or procedure being challenged had the result of denying a racial or language minority an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.