The U.S. Supreme Court case Ruth O. Shaw, et al. v. James B. Hunt Jr., Governor of North Carolina, et al., 1995 revolved around the issue of racial gerrymandering in North Carolina's redistricting plan following the 1990 census data release. The plaintiffs argued that one district was drawn with race as a predominant factor which violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under law by segregating voters based on race without compelling interest or narrow tailoring - key elements for strict scrutiny review in Equal Protection Clause cases involving racial classifications. In a landmark decision, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of Shaw and others stating that although creating majority-minority districts is not unconstitutional per se, it becomes so when race is used excessively leading to bizarrely shaped districts violating traditional redistricting principles like compactness and respect for political subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared interests. This ruling established an important precedent allowing lawsuits against racially gerrymandered districts even if they didn't lead to proportional underrepresentation of minority groups overall but were still deemed unjust due to excessive reliance on race during their creation process.

In the dissenting opinion for Shaw v. Hunt, Justice Stevens argued that race can be a legitimate factor in redistricting and disagreed with the majority's view that North Carolina's District 12 was racially gerrymandered. He contended that there is no constitutional problem when a state intentionally creates a majority-minority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act (VRA). According to him, such an act does not automatically classify people based on their race nor harm anyone because of his or her race. Stevens also criticized the Court’s reliance on aesthetics as evidence of racial intent, arguing it was subjective and could lead to arbitrary results. Furthermore, he expressed concern about how this ruling might discourage states from creating districts where minority voters have an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice which would undermine VRA’s purpose.