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Cite as: 531 U. S. ____ (2000) 1

Per Curiam SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES DARRYL SINKFIELD ET AL. 00132 v. PEGGY C. KELLEY ET AL.

JAMES BENNETT, SECRETARY OF STATE OF ALABAMA, ET AL. 00133 v. PEGGY C. KELLEY ET AL. ON APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF ALABAMA Nos. 00132 and 00133. Decided November 27, 2000

PER CURIAM. These cases involve a challenge to Alabama state legis- lative districts under the equal protection principles an- nounced by this Court in Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993). Appellees, the plaintiffs below, are white Alabama voters who are residents of various majority-white dis- tricts. The districts in which appellees reside are adjacent to majority-minority districts. All of the districts were created under a state redistricting plan whose acknowl- edged purpose was the maximization of the number of majority-minority districts in Alabama. Appellants in No. 00132 are a group of African-American voters whose initial state lawsuit resulted in the adoption of the redis- tricting plan at issue. Appellants in No. 00133 are Ala- bama state officials. Appellees brought suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama challenging their own districts as the products of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. A three-judge court convened to hear the case pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2284. The District Court ultimately held that seven of the challenged majority-

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white districts were the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering and enjoined their use in any election. 96 F. Supp. 2d 1301 (MD Ala. 2000). On direct appeal to this Court pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §1253, appellants in both cases contend, among other things, that appellees lack standing to maintain this suit under our decision in United States v. Hays, 515 U. S. 737 (1995). We agree. Hays involved a challenge to Louisiana's districting plan for its Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The plan contained two majority-minority districts. The appellees lived in a majority-white district that bordered on one of the majority-minority districts. The appellees challenged the entire plan, including their own district, as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under our decision in Shaw v. Reno, supra. United States v. Hays, 515 U. S., at 739742. We concluded that the appellees lacked standing to maintain their challenge. We assumed for the sake of argument that the evidence was sufficient to state a Shaw claim with respect to the neighboring majority-minority district. Id., at 746. But we concluded that the appellees had not shown a cognizable injury under the Fourteenth Amendment because they did not reside in the majority- minority district and had not otherwise shown that they had "personally been denied equal treatment." Id., at 744746, 746 (internal quotation marks omitted). The appellees' failure to show the requisite injury, we noted, was not changed by the fact that the racial composition of their own district might have been different had the leg- islature drawn the adjacent majority-minority district another way. Id., at 746. Appellees' position here is essentially indistinguishable from that of the appellees in Hays. Appellees are chal- lenging their own majority-white districts as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under a redis- tricting plan whose purpose was the creation of majority-

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minority districts, some of which border appellees' dis- tricts. Like the appellees in Hays, they have neither alleged nor produced any evidence that any of them was assigned to his or her district as a direct result of having "personally been subjected to a racial classification." Id., at 745; see also Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 904 (1996). Rather, appellees suggest that they are entitled to a pre- sumption of injury-in-fact because the bizarre shapes of their districts reveal that the districts were the product of an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 120a, 148a, 153a. The shapes of appellees' districts, however, were neces- sarily influenced by the shapes of the majority-minority districts upon which they border, and appellees have produced no evidence that anything other than the delib- erate creation of those majority-minority districts is re- sponsible for the districting lines of which they complain. Appellees' suggestion thus boils down to the claim that an unconstitutional use of race in drawing the boundaries of majority-minority districts necessarily involves an uncon- stitutional use of race in drawing the boundaries of neigh- boring majority-white districts. We rejected that argu- ment in Hays, explaining that evidence sufficient to support a Shaw claim with respect to a majority-minority district did "not prove anything" with respect to a neigh- boring majority-white district in which the appellees resided. United States v. Hays, 515 U. S., at 746. Ac- cordingly, "an allegation to that effect does not allege a cognizable injury under the Fourteenth Amendment." Ibid. The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the cases are remanded with instructions to dismiss the com- plaint. It is so ordered.