Editing Sandra Day O'Connor (section)

====Cases involving race====
In ''[[McCleskey v. Kemp]]'' (1987), O'Connor joined a 5–4 majority that voted to uphold the death penalty for an African American man, Warren McCleskey, convicted of killing a white police officer, despite statistical evidence that Black defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty than others both in Georgia and in the U.S. as a whole.<ref name="la times" /><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/GovernmentPolitics/Government/LegalCases&id=h-2933 |title=McCleskey v. Kemp |encyclopedia=[[New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |access-date=November 8, 2021 |archive-date=May 14, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130514024725/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=%2FGovernmentPolitics%2FGovernment%2FLegalCases&id=h-2933 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>David Baldus, et al., "In The Post-Furman Era: An Empirical And Legal Overview, With Recent Findings From Philadelphia", 83 ''Cornell Law Rev.'' 1638 (1998)</ref>

In the 1990 and 1995 ''[[Missouri v. Jenkins]]'' rulings, O'Connor voted with the majority that Federal district courts had no authority to require the state of Missouri to increase school funding to counteract racial inequality. In the 1991 case ''Freeman v. Pitts'', O'Connor joined a concurring opinion in a plurality, agreeing that a school district that had formerly been under judicial review for [[racial segregation]] could be freed of this review, even though not all [[desegregation]] targets had been met. Law professor Herman Schwartz criticized these rulings, writing that in both cases "both the fact and effects of segregation were still present".<ref name="la times" />

In 1996's ''[[Shaw v. Hunt]]'' and ''[[Shaw v. Reno]]'', O'Connor joined a Rehnquist opinion, following an earlier precedent from an opinion she authored in 1993, in which the Court struck down an electoral districting plan designed to facilitate the election of two Black representatives out of 12 from North Carolina, a state that had not had any Black representative since [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]], despite being approximately 20% Black<ref name="la times" />{{snd}}the Court held that the districts were unacceptably [[gerrymander]]ed and O'Connor called the odd shape of the district in question, [[North Carolina's 12th congressional district|North Carolina's 12th]], "bizarre".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993) |url=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/509/630/ |access-date=December 1, 2023 |website=Justia Law |language=en |archive-date=December 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231201040827/https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/509/630/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Law professor Herman Schwartz called O'Connor "the Court's leader in its assault on racially oriented [[affirmative action]]",<ref name="la times"/> although she joined with the Court in upholding the constitutionality of limited race-based admissions to universities.<ref name="presidential leadership"/>

In 2003, O'Connor authored a majority Supreme Court opinion (''[[Grutter v. Bollinger]]'') saying racial affirmative action should not be constitutional permanently, but long enough to correct past discrimination{{snd}}with an approximate limit of around 25 years.<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.hlrecord.org/2.4463/justice-o-connor-affirmative-action-should-continue-1.577502 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120118081933/http://www.hlrecord.org/2.4463/justice-o-connor-affirmative-action-should-continue-1.577502 |archive-date=January 18, 2012 |title=Justice O'Connor: affirmative action should continue |access-date=March 9, 2012 }}</ref>