The Supreme Court and state legislators have been struggling with voting districts as they relate one-person-one-vote principles and racial discrimination in multiple cases over the past several years, and the issues arise again in the two cases scheduled for Monday, December 5.
Amy Howe has an excellent article on Scotusblog that provides a full description of the context and these cases. Briefly, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections challenges twelve “majority-minority” districts in Virginia, with one side arguing that African Americans were packed into these districts in order to dilute their voting power in other districts and the other side claiming that the case was filed in order to require re-drawing of the maps after Democrats won the governorship. The second case, McCrory v. Harris, is a challenge to North Carolina’s infamous NC-1 and NC-12 districts, which look like this:
(via http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article58756583.html)