Miller v. Johnson

Miller v. Johnson
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 20, 1995 Decided June 29, 1995
Full case name	Zell Miller v. Davida Johnson
Citations	515 U.S. 900 (more) 115 S. Ct. 2475
Prior history	On appeal from U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Together with No. 94-797, Abrams et al. v. Johnson et al., and No. 94-929, United States v. Johnson et al., also on appeal from the same court.
Holding
Georgia's congressional redistricting plan violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas
Concurrence	O'Connor
Dissent	Stevens
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, Breyer, Souter (except as to Part III-B)

Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning "affirmative gerrymandering/racial gerrymandering", where racial minority majority electoral districts are created during redistricting to increase minority Congressional representation.

The case was brought to court by white voters in the Eleventh Congressional District of the state of Georgia. The irregularly shaped district, which stretched 6,784.2 square miles (17,571 km²) from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean was created to encompass enough of Georgia's African-American population to create a district where an African-American would have a high chance of being elected.

The Court ruled against the district, declaring it to be a "geographic monstrosity." It was declared unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, according to the interpretation in Shaw v. Reno (1993).

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 515
• List of United States Supreme Court cases
• Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
• List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Rehnquist Court

References

• Text of Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995) is available from: Justia · Findlaw · LII

• Short article

Further reading

• Cimino, Chapin (1997). "Class-Based Preferences in Affirmative Action Programs after Miller v Johnson: A Race-Neutral Option, or Subterfuge?". The University of Chicago Law Review (The University of Chicago Law Review) 64 (4): 1289–1310. doi:10.2307/1600217. JSTOR 1600217. 
• Leib, Jonathan I. (1998). "Communities of interest and minority districting after Miller v. Johnson". Political Geography 17 (6): 683–699. doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(97)00032-2. 
• Rush, Mark E. (January 1, 1995). "From Shaw v. Reno to Miller v. Johnson: Minority Representation and State Compliance with the Voting Rights Act". Publius: the Journal of Federalism 25 (3): 155–172. http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/155.