California Law Review VOL. 91 OCTOBER 2003 No. 5 Copyright © 2003 by California Law Review, Inc., a California Nonprofit Corporation Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, and the First Amendment Right of Association Guy-Uriel E. Charlest TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................ 12 11 I. Underlying Premises of Racial Districting Cases ........................... 1216 A. Skepticism About the Existence of Racial Identity .................. 1217 B. Individualism and Opposition to Race Essentialism ................ 1219 C. The Role of Political Elites in Constructing Racial Identity ..... 1223 D. Judicial Intervention as Remedy ............................................... 1226 II. U nderstanding Identity .................................................................... 1228 A. Lessons from Social Psychology .............................................. 1229 B. African Americans and Political Identity ................................. 1231 1. African Americans' Partisan Affiliation ............................ 1233 2. African Americans' Public Opinion ................................... 1235 Copyright © 2003 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. t Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School; Faculty Affiliate, Center for the Study of Political Psychology. I am thankful to Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Jim Gardner, Heather Gerken, Rick Hasen, Sam Issacharoff, Pam Karlan, Rick Pildes, Robert Post, and Terry Smith. I presented an earlier draft of this Article at the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Minnesota Law School, and the University of Notre Dame Law School. I would like to thank participants at all three schools, especially Brian Bix, Evan Caminker, Dale Carpenter, Jim Chen, Carol Chomsky, Sherman Clark, Dan Farber, Sam Gross, Don Herzog, Ellen Katz, Bill Kelley, David McGowan, Miranda McGowan, John Nagle, Michael Paulsen, Adam Samaha, and Julian Velasco. I benefited from the superb research assistance of Mary Pat Bym, Martha Ingram, John Kindschuh, Dezan Li, Cathy Ma, Jason Roberts, Chaba Samb, Rhona Schwaid, Susan Reed, Anne Troy, and Elliot Wren. Special thanks to the editors of the CaliforniaLaw Review. This Article received an honorable mention in the 2003 Scholarly Papers Competition of the American Association of Law Schools. 1209 1210 CALIFORNIA LA W REVIEW [Vol. 91:1209 3. Accounting for Racial Differences ..................................... 1237 III. The R ight of A ssociation ................................................................. 1239 A. Political Association: Contours and Exposition ...................... 1239 B. Setting Up the Problem: The Hypothetical State of Bliss ........ 1243 C. Political Association and Electoral Structures .......................... 1246 1. The Right of Association Protects Individuals' Ability to Aggregate Political Power .............................................. 1246 2. The Right of Association Applies to Electoral Structures ............................................................................ 1255 3. How Electoral Structures Might Burden Associational R ights ................................................................................. 12 60 IV. Liberty, Equality, and Identity: Examining State Interest .............. 1262 A. The Equality Right Cannot Automatically Trump the L iberty R ight ............................................................................ 1265 B. CaliforniaDemocratic Party v. Jones and the Importance of Political A ssociation ............................................................. 1270 V . Implications ..................................................................................... 127 1 A. Justice Breyer's Pragmatic Balancing Approach ...................... 1272 B. Application of Justice Breyer's Balancing Approach in R acial D istricting Cases ............................................................ 1274 C onclusion ............................................................................................ 1279 2003] RACIAL IDENTITY AND ELECTORAL STRUCTURES 1211 Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, and the First Amendment Right of Association Guy-Uriel E. Charles This Article develops a novel and provocative approachfor thinking about the role of race in democratic politics. Professor Charles identifies the Supreme Court's descriptive and normative struggles with racialiden- tity, which have led many on the Court to question the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. He relies upon the social identity literaturein social psychology, as well as the race andpolitics literature in political science, to demonstrate empirically the relationship between racial and political identity. He then uses the right of association,particularly as developed by the Supreme Court in the party and ballot access cases, to argue that the FirstAmendment protects the right of voters of color to associate as voters of color where race and political identity are correlated In so doing, he characterizes the Court's attempt to grasp the proper role of race in democraticpolitics as a deeper struggle between equality and liberty val- ues. He concludes by suggesting a framework for balancing liberty and equality concerns in the design of electoral institutions. INTRODUCTION The Supreme Court's voting rights jurisprudence suffers from an identity crisis. The Court's cases support at least two divergent proposi- tions. In some cases, the Court has intimated that state actors violate the Equal Protection Clause if they justify race consciousness in the design of democratic structures on the assumption that racial identity' and political identity2 are positively correlated.' Indeed, at times the Court speaks as if I. "Racial identification" is defined as a self-awareness that one belongs to a particular racial group (or groups) and a psychological sense of attachment to that racial group. See PATRICIA GURIN ET AL., HOPE & INDEPENDENCE: BLACKS' RESPONSE TO ELECTORAL AND PARTY POLITICS 75 (1989); Pamela Johnston Conover, The Role of Social Groups in Political Thinking, 18 BRIT. J. POL. Sci. 51, 52 (1988). 2. In this Article, "political identification" is primarily defined as party identification, as well as political ideology or orientation such as self-location on a liberal-conservative continuum. See KATHERINE TATE, FROM PROTEST TO POLITICS: THE NEW BLACK VOTERS IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS 64(1993). 3. See, e.g., Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 647 (1993) (Shaw 1) (stating that race-based districting "bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid"); see also Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, 985 1212 CALIFORNIA LA W RE VIEW [Vol. 91:1209 the Fourteenth Amendment demands the eradication of racial identity as a subset of political identity,4 although it has not explicitly mandated race blindness in the composition of electoral structures.5 In other cases, how- ever, the Court has maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment is capable of accommodating state action that recognizes race as a basis for political identity.6 These cases imply that state actors may assume a relationship between racial and political identity and may accordingly take race into account in the design of democratic institutions.7 These incongruous posi- tions lead to the conclusion that, at best, the Court is genuinely vexed and perplexed by the relationship between racial and political identity. The mixed message communicated by the Court's voting rights cases is understandable because of the multiple and often crosscutting constitu- tional values at play in these cases.' However, the Court has failed to pro- vide any guidance for resolving the uneasy tension of these coexisting constitutional values. While both the Court and commentators have recog- nized that race consciousness in the design of democratic structures touches upon Fourteenth Amendment equality considerations, 9 they have (1996) (noting that voters are "more than mere racial statistics" and that the Court's "Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence evinces a commitment to eliminate unnecessary and excessive use and reinforcement of racial stereotypes"); Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 914 (1995) (remarking that the assumption that voters of color "share a single political interest" is "the precise use of race as a proxy the Constitution prohibits"); Guy-Uriel E. Charles & Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Challenges to Racial Redistricting in the New Millennium: Hunt v. Cromartie As a Case Study, 58 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 227 (2001); Richard H. Pildes, Principled Limitations on Racial and Partisan Redistricting, 106 YALE L.J. 2505 (1997). As used in this Article, the terms "electoral structures." "democratic structures," and "democratic institutions" refer to methods of conducting elections or, more precisely, voting systems. These methods include districting (single member or multiple member), cumulative voting, preference voting, proportional representation, and other types of voting structures. For typologies and definitions of electoral structures, see SAMUEL ISSACHAROFF ET AL., THE LAW OF DEMOCRACY: LEGAL STRUCTURE OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS 1089-1131 (2002). 4. See, e.g., Shaw 1, 509 U.S. at 647 (categorizing as an "impermissible stereotype" any purported relationship between racial and political identity). 5. Id. at 642 ("This Court never has held that race-conscious