Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 21–1086 and 21–1087
WES ALLEN, ALABAMA SECRETARY OF STATE, ET AL., APPELLANTS
21–1086v.21–1086
EVAN MILLIGAN, ET AL.
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA
WES ALLEN, ALABAMA SECRETARY OF STATE, ET AL., PETITIONERS
21–1087v.21–1087
MARCUS CASTER, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
[June 8, 2023]
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–B–1.[* 1]
In January 2022, a three-judge District Court sitting in Alabama preliminarily enjoined the State from using the districting plan it had recently adopted for the 2022 congressional elections, finding that the plan likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U. S. C. §10301. This Court stayed the District Court’s order pending further review. 595 U. S. ___ (2022). After conducting that review, we now affirm.
I
A
Shortly after the Civil War, Congress passed and the States ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, providing that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged … on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, §1. In the century that followed, however, the Amendment proved little more than a parchment promise. Jim Crow laws like literacy tests, poll taxes, and “good-morals” requirements abounded, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 312–313 (1966), “render[ing] the right to vote illusory for blacks,” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 220–221 (2009) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Congress stood up to little of it; “[t]he first century of congressional enforcement of the [Fifteenth] Amendment … can only be regarded as a failure.” Id., at 197 (majority opinion).
That changed in 1965. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Congress enacted and President Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act. 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 52 U. S. C. §10301 et seq. The Act “create[d] stringent new remedies for voting discrimination,” attempting to forever “banish the blight of racial discrimination in voting.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308. By 1981, in only sixteen years’ time, many considered the VRA “the most successful civil rights statute in the history of the Nation.” S. Rep. No. 97–417, p. 111 (1982) (Senate Report).
These cases concern Section 2 of that Act. In its original form, “§2 closely tracked the language of the [Fifteenth] Amendment” and, as a result, had little independent force. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 3).[1] Our leading case on §2 at the time was City of Mobile v. Bolden, which involved a claim by black voters that the City’s at-large election system effectively excluded them from participating in the election of city commissioners. 446 U. S. 55 (1980). The commission had three seats, black voters comprised one-third of the City’s population, but no black-preferred candidate had ever won election.
The Court ruled against the plaintiffs. The Fifteenth Amendment—and thus §2—prohibits States from acting with a “racially discriminatory motivation” or an “invidious purpose” to discriminate. Id., at 61–65 (plurality opinion). But it does not prohibit laws that are discriminatory only in effect. Ibid. The Mobile plaintiffs could “register and vote without hindrance”—“their freedom to vote ha[d] not been denied or abridged by anyone.” Id., at 65. The fact that they happened to lose frequently was beside the point. Nothing the City had done “purposeful[ly] exclu[ded]” them “from participati[ng] in the election process.” Id., at 64.
Almost immediately after it was decided, Mobile “produced an avalanche of criticism, both in the media and within the civil rights community.” T. Boyd & S. Markman, The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: A Legislative History, 40 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1347, 1355 (1983) (Boyd & Markman). The New York Times wrote that the decision represented “the biggest step backwards in civil rights to come from the Nixon Court.” N. Y. Times, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A22. And the Washington Post described Mobile as a “major defeat for blacks and other minorities fighting electoral schemes that exclude them from office.” Washington Post, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A5. By focusing on discriminatory intent and ignoring disparate effect, critics argued, the Court had abrogated “the standard used by the courts to determine whether [racial] discrimination existed …: Whether such discrimination existed.” It’s Results That Count, Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 3, 1982, p. 8–A.
But Mobile had its defenders, too. In their view, abandoning the intent test in favor of an effects test would inevitably require a focus on proportionality—wherever a minority group won fewer seats in the legislature than its share of the population, the charge could be made that the State law had a discriminatory effect. That, after all, was the type of claim brought in Mobile. But mandating racial proportionality in elections was regarded by many as intolerable. Doing so, wrote Senator Orrin Hatch in the Washington Star, would be “strongly resented by the American public.” Washington Star, Sept. 30, 1980, p. A–9. The Wall Street Journal offered similar criticism. An effects test would generate “more, not less, racial and ethnic polarization.” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 1982, p. 28.
This sharp debate arrived at Congress’s doorstep in 1981. The question whether to broaden §2 or keep it as is, said Hatch—by then Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee before which §2 would be debated—“involve[d] one of the most substantial constitutional issues ever to come before this body.” 2 Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 1, p. 1 (1982).
Proceedings in Congress mirrored the disagreement that had developed around the country. In April 1981, Congressman Peter W. Rodino, Jr.—longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee—introduced a bill to amend the VRA, proposing that the words “to deny or abridge” in §2 be replaced with the phrase “in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement.” H. R. 3112, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (as introduced) (emphasis added). This was the effects test that Mobile’s detractors sought.
But those wary of proportionality were not far behind. Senator Hatch argued that the effects test “was intelligible only to the extent that it approximated a standard of proportional representation by race.” Boyd & Markman 1392. The Attorney General had the same concern. The effects test “would be triggered whenever election results did not mirror the population mix of a particular community,” he wrote, producing “essentially a quota system for electoral politics.” N. Y. Times, Mar. 27, 1982, p. 23.
The impasse was not resolved until late April 1982, when Senator Bob Dole proposed a compromise. Boyd & Markman 1414. Section 2 would include the effects test that many desired but also a robust disclaimer against proportionality. Seeking to navigate any tension between the two, the Dole Amendment borrowed language from a Fourteenth Amendment case of ours, White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973), which many in Congress believed would allow courts to consider effects but avoid proportionality. The standard for liability in voting cases, White explained, was whether “the political processes leading to nomination and election were not equally open to participation by the group in question—[in] that its members had less opportunity than did other residents in the district to participate in the political processes and to elect legislators of their choice.” Id., at 766.
The Dole compromise won bipartisan support and, on June 18, the Senate passed the 1982 amendments by an overwhelming margin, 85–8. Eleven days later, President Reagan signed the Act into law. The amended §2 reads as follows:
“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color … as provided in subsection (b).
“(b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens … in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” 52 U. S. C. §10301.
B
For the first 115 years following Reconstruction, the State of Alabama elected no black Representatives to Congress. See Singleton v. Merrill, 582 F. Supp. 3d 924, 947 (ND Ala. 2022) (per curiam). In 1992, several plaintiffs sued the State, alleging that it had been impermissibly diluting the votes of black Alabamians in violation of §2. See Wesch v. Hunt, 785 F. Supp. 1491, 1493 (SD Ala.). The lawsuit produced a majority-black district in Alabama for the first time in decades. Id., at 1499. And that fall, Birmingham lawyer Earl Hillard became the first black Representative from Alabama since 1877. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 947.
Alabama’s congressional map has “remained remarkably similar” after Wesch. Brief for Appellants in No. 21–1086 etc., p. 9 (Brief for Alabama). The map contains seven congressional districts, each with a single representative. See Supp. App. 205–211; 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 951. District 1 encompasses the Gulf Coast region in the southwest; District 2—known as the Wiregrass region—occupies the southeast; District 3 covers the eastern-central part of the State; Districts 4 and 5 stretch width-wise across the north, with the latter layered atop the former; District 6 is right in the State’s middle; and District 7 spans the central west. Id., at 951.
In 2020, the decennial census revealed that Alabama’s population had grown by 5.1%. See 1 App. 86. A group of plaintiffs led by Alabama legislator Bobby Singleton sued the State, arguing that the existing congressional map was malapportioned and racially gerrymandered in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 938–939. While litigation was proceeding, the Alabama Legislature’s Committee on Reapportionment began creating a new districting map. Ibid. Although the prior decade’s population growth did not change the number of seats that Alabama would receive in the House, the growth had been unevenly distributed across the State, and the existing map was thus out of date.
To solve the problem, the State turned to experienced mapmaker Randy Hinaman, who had created several districting maps that Alabama used over the past 30 years. Id., at 947–948. The starting point for Hinaman was the then-existing 2011 congressional map, itself a product of the 2001 map that Hinaman had also created. Civ. No. 21–1530 (ND Ala.), ECF Doc. 70–2, pp. 40, 93–94; see also 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 950. Hinaman worked to adjust the 2011 map in accordance with the redistricting guidelines set by the legislature’s Reapportionment Committee. Id., at 948–950; 1 App. 275. Those guidelines prioritized population equality, contiguity, compactness, and avoiding dilution of minority voting strength. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1035–1036. They also encouraged, as a secondary matter, avoiding incumbent pairings, respecting communities of interest, minimizing the number of counties in each district, and preserving cores of existing districts. Id., at 1036–1037.
The resulting map Hinaman drew largely resembled the 2011 map, again producing only one district in which black voters constituted a majority of the voting age population. Supp. App. 205–211. The Alabama Legislature enacted Hinaman’s map under the name HB1. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 935, 950–951. Governor Ivey signed HB1 into law on November 4, 2021. Id., at 950.
C
Three groups of plaintiffs brought suit seeking to stop Alabama’s Secretary of State from conducting congressional elections under HB1. The first group was led by Dr. Marcus Caster, a resident of Washington County, who challenged HB1 as invalid under §2. Id., at 934–935, 980. The second group, led by Montgomery County resident Evan Milligan, brought claims under §2 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 939–940, 966. Finally, the Singleton plaintiffs, who had previously sued to enjoin Alabama’s 2011 congressional map, amended their complaint to challenge HB1 as an impermissible racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 938–939.
A three-judge District Court was convened, comprised of Circuit Judge Marcus and District Judges Manasco and Moorer. The Singleton and Milligan actions were consolidated before the three-judge Court for purposes of preliminary injunction proceedings, while Caster proceeded before Judge Manasco on a parallel track. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 934–935. A preliminary injunction hearing began on January 4, 2022, and concluded on January 12. Id., at 943. In that time, the three-judge District Court received live testimony from 17 witnesses, reviewed more than 1000 pages of briefing and upwards of 350 exhibits, and considered arguments from the 43 different lawyers who had appeared in the litigation. Id., at 935–936. After reviewing that extensive record, the Court concluded in a 227-page opinion that the question whether HB1 likely violated §2 was not “a close one.” It did. Id., at 1026. The Court thus preliminarily enjoined Alabama from using HB1 in forthcoming elections. Id., at 936.[2]
Four days later, on January 28, Alabama moved in this Court for a stay of the District Court’s injunction. This Court granted a stay and scheduled the cases for argument, noting probable jurisdiction in Milligan and granting certiorari before judgment in Caster. 595 U. S. ___ (2022).
II
The District Court found that plaintiffs demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that HB1 violates §2. We affirm that determination.
A
For the past forty years, we have evaluated claims brought under §2 using the three-part framework developed in our decision Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Gingles concerned a challenge to North Carolina’s multimember districting scheme, which allegedly diluted the vote of its black citizens. Id., at 34–36. The case presented the first opportunity since the 1982 amendments to address how the new §2 would operate.
Gingles began by describing what §2 guards against. “The essence of a §2 claim,” the Court explained, “is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an “electoral structure operates to minimize or cancel out” minority voters’ “ability to elect their preferred candidates.” Id., at 48. Such a risk is greatest “where minority and majority voters consistently prefer different candidates” and where minority voters are submerged in a majority voting population that “regularly defeat[s]” their choices. Ibid.
To succeed in proving a §2 violation under Gingles, plaintiffs must satisfy three “preconditions.” Id., at 50. First, the “minority group must be sufficiently large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.” Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Comm’n, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (per curiam) (slip op., at 3) (citing Gingles, 478 U. S., at 46–51). A district will be reasonably configured, our cases explain, if it comports with traditional districting criteria, such as being contiguous and reasonably compact. See Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, 575 U. S. 254, 272 (2015). “Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. And third, “the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it … to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. Finally, a plaintiff who demonstrates the three preconditions must also show, under the “totality of circumstances,” that the political process is not “equally open” to minority voters. Id., at 45–46; see also id., at 36–38 (identifying several factors relevant to the totality of circumstances inquiry, including “the extent of any history of official discrimination in the state … that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process”).
Each Gingles precondition serves a different purpose. The first, focused on geographical compactness and numerosity, is “needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district.” Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S. 25, 40 (1993). The second, concerning the political cohesiveness of the minority group, shows that a representative of its choice would in fact be elected. See ibid. The third precondition, focused on racially polarized voting, “establish[es] that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote” at least plausibly on account of race. Ibid. And finally, the totality of circumstances inquiry recognizes that application of the Gingles factors is “peculiarly dependent upon the facts of each case.” 478 U. S., at 79. Before courts can find a violation of §2, therefore, they must conduct “an intensely local appraisal” of the electoral mechanism at issue, as well as a “searching practical evaluation of the ‘past and present reality.’ ” Ibid.
Gingles has governed our Voting Rights Act jurisprudence since it was decided 37 years ago. Congress has never disturbed our understanding of §2 as Gingles construed it. And we have applied Gingles in one §2 case after another, to different kinds of electoral systems and to different jurisdictions in States all over the country. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146 (1993) (Ohio); Growe, 507 U. S., at 25 (Minnesota); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997 (1994) (Florida); Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874 (1994) (Georgia); Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U. S. 74 (1997) (Georgia); League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 423 (2006) (LULAC) (Texas); Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U. S. 1 (2009) (plurality opinion) (North Carolina); Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285 (2017) (North Carolina); Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. ___ (2018) (Texas); Wisconsin Legislature, 595 U. S. ___ (Wisconsin).
B
As noted, the District Court concluded that plaintiffs’ §2 claim was likely to succeed under Gingles. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1026. Based on our review of the record, we agree.
With respect to the first Gingles precondition, the District Court correctly found that black voters could constitute a majority in a second district that was “reasonably configured.” 1 App. to Emergency Application for Stay in No. 21–1086 etc., p. 253 (MSA). The plaintiffs adduced eleven illustrative maps—that is, example districting maps that Alabama could enact—each of which contained two majority-black districts that comported with traditional districting criteria. With respect to compactness, for example, the District Court explained that the maps submitted by one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Moon Duchin, “perform[ed] generally better on average than” did HB1. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1009. A map offered by another of plaintiffs’ experts, Bill Cooper, produced districts roughly as compact as the existing plan. Ibid. And none of plaintiffs’ maps contained any “tentacles, appendages, bizarre shapes, or any other obvious irregularities that would make it difficult to find” them sufficiently compact. Id., at 1011. Plaintiffs’ maps also satisfied other traditional districting criteria. They contained equal populations, were contiguous, and respected existing political subdivisions, such as counties, cities, and towns. Id., at 1011, 1016. Indeed, some of plaintiffs’ proposed maps split the same number of county lines as (or even fewer county lines than) the State’s map. Id., at 1011–1012. We agree with the District Court, therefore, that plaintiffs’ illustrative maps “strongly suggest[ed] that Black voters in Alabama” could constitute a majority in a second, reasonably configured, district. Id., at 1010.
The State nevertheless argues that plaintiffs’ maps were not reasonably configured because they failed to keep together a traditional community of interest within Alabama. See, e.g., id., at 1012. A “community of interest,” according to Alabama’s districting guidelines, is an “area with recognized similarities of interests, including but not limited to ethnic, racial, economic, tribal, social, geographic, or historical identities.” Ibid. Alabama argues that the Gulf Coast region in the southwest of the State is such a community of interest, and that plaintiffs’ maps erred by separating it into two different districts. Ibid.
We do not find the State’s argument persuasive. Only two witnesses testified that the Gulf Coast was a community of interest. Id., at 1015. The testimony provided by one of those witnesses was “partial, selectively informed, and poorly supported.” Ibid. The other witness, meanwhile, justified keeping the Gulf Coast together “simply” to preserve “political advantage[]”: “You start splitting counties,” he testified, “and that county loses its influence. That’s why I don’t want Mobile County to be split.” Id., at 990, 1015. The District Court understandably found this testimony insufficient to sustain Alabama’s “overdrawn argument that there can be no legitimate reason to split” the Gulf Coast region. Id., at 1015.
Even if the Gulf Coast did constitute a community of interest, moreover, the District Court found that plaintiffs’ maps would still be reasonably configured because they joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt. Id., at 1012–1014. Named for its fertile soil, the Black Belt contains a high proportion of black voters, who “share a rural geography, concentrated poverty, unequal access to government services, … lack of adequate healthcare,” and a lineal connection to “the many enslaved people brought there to work in the antebellum period.” Id., at 1012–1013; see also 1 App. 299–304. The District Court concluded—correctly, under our precedent—that it did not have to conduct a “beauty contest[]” between plaintiffs’ maps and the State’s. There would be a split community of interest in both. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1012 (quoting Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 977–978 (1996) (plurality opinion)).
The State also makes a related argument based on “core retention”—a term that refers to the proportion of districts that remain when a State transitions from one districting plan to another. See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 25, 61. Here, by largely mirroring Alabama’s 2011 districting plan, HB1 performs well on the core retention metric. Plaintiffs’ illustrative plans, by contrast, naturally fare worse because they change where the 2011 district lines were drawn. See e.g., Supp. App. 164–173. But this Court has never held that a State’s adherence to a previously used districting plan can defeat a §2 claim. If that were the rule, a State could immunize from challenge a new racially discriminatory redistricting plan simply by claiming that it resembled an old racially discriminatory plan. That is not the law: §2 does not permit a State to provide some voters “less opportunity … to participate in the political process” just because the State has done it before. 52 U. S. C. §10301(b).
As to the second and third Gingles preconditions, the District Court determined that there was “no serious dispute that Black voters are politically cohesive, nor that the challenged districts’ white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate.” 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1016 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court noted that, “on average, Black voters supported their candidates of choice with 92.3% of the vote” while “white voters supported Black-preferred candidates with 15.4% of the vote.” Id., at 1017 (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiffs’ experts described the evidence of racially polarized voting in Alabama as “intens[e],” “very strong,” and “very clear.” Ibid. Even Alabama’s expert conceded “that the candidates preferred by white voters in the areas that he looked at regularly defeat the candidates preferred by Black voters.” Id., at 1018.
Finally, the District Court concluded that plaintiffs had carried their burden at the totality of circumstances stage. The Court observed that elections in Alabama were racially polarized; that “Black Alabamians enjoy virtually zero success in statewide elections”; that political campaigns in Alabama had been “characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals”; and that “Alabama’s extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination is undeniable and well documented.” Id., at 1018–1024.
We see no reason to disturb the District Court’s careful factual findings, which are subject to clear error review and have gone unchallenged by Alabama in any event. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at 309. Nor is there a basis to upset the District Court’s legal conclusions. The Court faithfully applied our precedents and correctly determined that, under existing law, HB1 violated §2.
III
The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew.
The centerpiece of the State’s effort is what it calls the “race-neutral benchmark.” The theory behind it is this: Using modern computer technology, mapmakers can now generate millions of possible districting maps for a given State. The maps can be designed to comply with traditional districting criteria but to not consider race. The mapmaker can determine how many majority-minority districts exist in each map, and can then calculate the median or average number of majority-minority districts in the entire multimillion-map set. That number is called the race-neutral benchmark.
The State contends that this benchmark should serve as the point of comparison in §2 cases. The benchmark, the State says, was derived from maps that were “race-blind”—maps that cannot have “deni[ed] or abridge[d]” anyone’s right to vote “on account of race” because they never took race into “account” in the first place. 52 U. S. C. §10301(a). Courts in §2 cases should therefore compare the number of majority-minority districts in the State’s plan to the benchmark. If those numbers are similar—if the State’s map “resembles” the benchmark in this way—then, Alabama argues, the State’s map also cannot have “deni[ed] or abridge[d]” anyone’s right to vote “on account of race.” Ibid.
Alabama contends that its approach should be adopted for two reasons. First, the State argues that a race-neutral benchmark best matches the text of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 requires that the political processes be “equally open.” §10301(b). What that means, the State asserts, is that the State’s map cannot impose “obstacles or burdens that block or seriously hinder voting on account of race.” Brief for Alabama 43. These obstacles do not exist, in the State’s view, where its map resembles a map that never took race into “account.” Ibid. Second, Alabama argues that the Gingles framework ends up requiring racial proportionality in districting. According to the State, Gingles demands that where “another majority-black district could be drawn, it must be drawn.” Brief for Alabama 71 (emphasis deleted). And that sort of proportionality, Alabama continues, is inconsistent with the compromise that Congress struck, with the text of §2, and with the Constitution’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.
To apply the race-neutral benchmark in practice, Alabama would require §2 plaintiffs to make at least three showings. First, the illustrative plan that plaintiffs adduce for the first Gingles precondition cannot have been “based” on race. Brief for Alabama 56. Second, plaintiffs must show at the totality of circumstances stage that the State’s enacted plan diverges from the average plan that would be drawn without taking race into account. And finally, plaintiffs must ultimately prove that any deviation between the State’s plan and a race-neutral plan is explainable “only” by race—not, for example, by “the State’s naturally occurring geography and demography.” Id., at 46.
As we explain below, we find Alabama’s new approach to §2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice. We accordingly decline to recast our §2 case law as Alabama requests.
A
1
Section 2 prohibits States from imposing any “standard, practice, or procedure … in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen … to vote on account of race or color.” 52 U. S. C. §10301(a). What that means, §2 goes on to explain, is that the political processes in the State must be “equally open,” such that minority voters do not “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” §10301(b).
We have understood the language of §2 against the background of the hard-fought compromise that Congress struck. To that end, we have reiterated that §2 turns on the presence of discriminatory effects, not discriminatory intent. See, e.g., Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 403–404 (1991). And we have explained that “[i]t is patently clear that Congress has used the words ‘on account of race or color’ in the Act to mean ‘with respect to’ race or color, and not to connote any required purpose of racial discrimination.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 71, n. 34 (plurality opinion) (some alterations omitted). Individuals thus lack an equal opportunity to participate in the political process when a State’s electoral structure operates in a manner that “minimize[s] or cancel[s] out the[ir] voting strength.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an individual is disabled from “enter[ing] into the political process in a reliable and meaningful manner” “in the light of past and present reality, political and otherwise.” White, 412 U. S., at 767, 770. A district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.
The State’s reading of §2, by contrast, runs headlong into our precedent. Alabama asserts that a State’s map does not “abridge[]” a person’s right to vote “on account of race” if the map resembles a sufficient number of race-neutral alternatives. See Brief for Alabama 54–56. But our cases have consistently focused, for purposes of litigation, on the specific illustrative maps that a plaintiff adduces. Deviation from that map shows it is possible that the State’s map has a disparate effect on account of race. The remainder of the Gingles test helps determine whether that possibility is reality by looking to polarized voting preferences and the frequency of racially discriminatory actions taken by the State, past and present.
A State’s liability under §2, moreover, must be determined “based on the totality of circumstances.” 52 U. S. C. §10301(b). Yet Alabama suggests there is only one “circumstance[]” that matters—how the State’s map stacks up relative to the benchmark. That single-minded view of §2 cannot be squared with the VRA’s demand that courts employ a more refined approach. And we decline to adopt an interpretation of §2 that would “revise and reformulate the Gingles threshold inquiry that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence” for nearly forty years. Bartlett, 556 U. S., at 16 (plurality opinion); see also Wisconsin Legislature, 595 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (faulting lower court for “improperly reduc[ing] Gingles’ totality-of-circumstances analysis to a single factor”); De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1018 (“An inflexible rule would run counter to the textual command of §2, that the presence or absence of a violation be assessed ‘based on the totality of circumstances.’ ”).[3]
2
Alabama also argues that the race-neutral benchmark is required because our existing §2 jurisprudence inevitably demands racial proportionality in districting, contrary to the last sentence of §2(b). But properly applied, the Gingles framework itself imposes meaningful constraints on proportionality, as our decisions have frequently demonstrated.
In Shaw v. Reno, for example, we considered the permissibility of a second majority-minority district in North Carolina, which at the time had 12 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives and a 20% black voting age population. 509 U. S. 630, 633–634 (1993). The second majority-minority district North Carolina drew was “160 miles long and, for much of its length, no wider than the [interstate] corridor.” Id., at 635. The district wound “in snakelike fashion through tobacco country, financial centers, and manufacturing areas until it gobble[d] in enough enclaves of black neighborhoods.” Id., at 635–636. Indeed, the district was drawn so imaginatively that one state legislator remarked: “[I]f you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district.” Id., at 636.
Though North Carolina believed the additional district was required by §2, we rejected that conclusion, finding instead that those challenging the map stated a claim of impermissible racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 655, 658. In so holding, we relied on the fact that the proposed district was not reasonably compact. Id., at 647. North Carolina had “concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district by disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions.” Ibid. (emphasis added). And “[a] reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise separated by geographical and political boundaries,” we said, raised serious constitutional concerns. Ibid. (emphasis added).
The same theme emerged in our 1995 decision Miller v. Johnson, where we upheld a district court’s finding that one of Georgia’s ten congressional districts was the product of an impermissible racial gerrymander. 515 U. S. 900, 906, 910–911. At the time, Georgia’s black voting age population was 27%, but there was only one majority-minority district. Id., at 906. To comply with the VRA, Georgia thought it necessary to create two more majority-minority districts—achieving proportionality. Id., at 920–921. But like North Carolina in Shaw, Georgia could not create the districts without flouting traditional criteria. One district “centered around four discrete, widely spaced urban centers that ha[d] absolutely nothing to do with each other, and stretch[ed] the district hundreds of miles across rural counties and narrow swamp corridors.” 515 U. S., at 908. “Geographically,” we said of the map, “it is a monstrosity.” Id., at 909.
In Bush v. Vera, a plurality of the Court again explained how traditional districting criteria limited any tendency of the VRA to compel proportionality. The case concerned Texas’s creation of three additional majority-minority districts. 517 U. S., at 957. Though the districts brought the State closer to proportional representation, we nevertheless held that they constituted racial gerrymanders in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. That was because the districts had “no integrity in terms of traditional, neutral redistricting criteria.” Id., at 960. One of the majority-black districts consisted “of narrow and bizarrely shaped tentacles.” Id., at 965. The proposed majority-Hispanic district resembled “a sacred Mayan bird” with “[s]pindly legs reach[ing] south” and a “plumed head ris[ing] northward.” Id., at 974.
The point of all this is a simple one. Forcing proportional representation is unlawful and inconsistent with this Court’s approach to implementing §2. The numbers bear the point out well. At the congressional level, the fraction of districts in which black-preferred candidates are likely to win “is currently below the Black share of the eligible voter population in every state but three.” Brief for Professors Jowei Chen et al. as Amici Curiae 3 (Chen Brief). Only one State in the country, meanwhile, “has attained a proportional share” of districts in which Hispanic-preferred candidates are likely to prevail. Id., at 3–4. That is because as residential segregation decreases—as it has “sharply” done since the 1970s—satisfying traditional districting criteria such as the compactness requirement “becomes more difficult.” T. Crum, Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, 70 Duke L. J. 261, 279, and n. 105 (2020).
Indeed, as amici supporting the appellees emphasize, §2 litigation in recent years has rarely been successful for just that reason. See Chen Brief 3–4. Since 2010, plaintiffs nationwide have apparently succeeded in fewer than ten §2 suits. Id., at 7. And “the only state legislative or congressional districts that were redrawn because of successful Section 2 challenges were a handful of state house districts near Milwaukee and Houston.” Id., at 7–8. By contrast, “[n]umerous lower courts” have upheld districting maps “where, due to minority populations’ geographic diffusion, plaintiffs couldn’t design an additional majority-minority district” or satisfy the compactness requirement. Id., at 15–16 (collecting cases). The same has been true of recent litigation in this Court. See Abbott, 585 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 33–34) (finding a Texas district did not violate §2 because “the geography and demographics of south and west Texas do not permit the creation of any more than the seven Latino … districts that exist under the current plan”).[4]
Reapportionment, we have repeatedly observed, “is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State[s],” not the federal courts. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 21). Properly applied, the Gingles factors help ensure that remains the case. As respondents themselves emphasize, §2 “never require[s] adoption of districts that violate traditional redistricting principles.” Brief for Respondents in No. 21–1087, p. 3. Its exacting requirements, instead, limit judicial intervention to “those instances of intensive racial politics” where the “excessive role [of race] in the electoral process … den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.” Senate Report 33–34.
B
Although we are content to reject Alabama’s invitation to change existing law on the ground that the State misunderstands §2 and our decisions implementing it, we also address how the race-neutral benchmark would operate in practice. Alabama’s approach fares poorly on that score, which further counsels against our adopting it.
1
The first change to existing law that Alabama would require is prohibiting the illustrative maps that plaintiffs submit to satisfy the first Gingles precondition from being “based” on race. Brief for Alabama 56. Although Alabama is not entirely clear whether, under its view, plaintiffs’ illustrative plans must not take race into account at all or whether they must just not “prioritize” race, ibid., we see no reason to impose such a new rule.
When it comes to considering race in the context of districting, we have made clear that there is a difference “between being aware of racial considerations and being motivated by them.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 916; see also North Carolina v. Covington, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (per curiam) (slip op., at 8). The former is permissible; the latter is usually not. That is because “[r]edistricting legislatures will … almost always be aware of racial demographics,” Miller, 515 U. S., at 916, but such “race consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination,” Shaw, 509 U. S., at 646. Section 2 itself “demands consideration of race.” Abbott, 581 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). The question whether additional majority-minority districts can be drawn, after all, involves a “quintessentially race-conscious calculus.” De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1020.
At the same time, however, race may not be “the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless [there is] a compelling reason.” Cooper, 581 U. S., at 291. Race predominates in the drawing of district lines, our cases explain, when “race-neutral considerations [come] into play only after the race-based decision had been made.” Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 580 U. S. 178, 189 (2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). That may occur where “race for its own sake is the overriding reason for choosing one map over others.” Id., at 190.
While the line between racial predominance and racial consciousness can be difficult to discern, see Miller, 515 U. S., at 916, it was not breached here. The Caster plaintiffs relied on illustrative maps produced by expert Bill Cooper. See 2 App. 591–592. Cooper testified that while it was necessary for him to consider race, he also took several other factors into account, such as compactness, contiguity, and population equality. Ibid. Cooper testified that he gave all these factors “equal weighting.” Id., at 594. And when asked squarely whether race predominated in his development of the illustrative plans, Cooper responded: “No. It was a consideration. This is a Section 2 lawsuit, after all. But it did not predominate or dominate.” Id., at 595.
The District Court agreed. It found “Cooper’s testimony highly credible” and commended Cooper for “work[ing] hard to give ‘equal weight[]’ to all traditional redistricting criteria.” 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1005–1006; see also id., at 978–979. The court also explained that Alabama’s evidence of racial predominance in Cooper’s maps was exceedingly thin. Alabama’s expert, Thomas Bryan, “testified that he never reviewed the exhibits to Mr. Cooper’s report” and “that he never reviewed” one of the illustrative plans that Cooper submitted. Id., at 1006. Bryan further testified that he could offer no “conclusions or opinions as to the apparent basis of any individual line drawing decisions in Cooper’s illustrative plans.” 2 App. 740. By his own admission, Bryan’s analysis of any race predominance in Cooper’s maps “was pretty light.” Id., at 739. The District Court did not err in finding that race did not predominate in Cooper’s maps in light of the evidence before it.[5]
The dissent contends that race nevertheless predominated in both Cooper’s and Duchin’s maps because they were designed to hit “ ‘express racial target[s]’ ”—namely, two “50%-plus majority-black districts.” Post, at 15 (opinion of Thomas, J.) (quoting Bethune-Hill, 580 U. S., at 192). This argument fails in multiple ways. First, the dissent’s reliance on Bethune-Hill is mistaken. In that case, this Court was unwilling to conclude that a State’s maps were produced in a racially predominant manner. Instead, we remanded for the lower court to conduct the predominance analysis itself, explaining that “the use of an express racial target” was just one factor among others that the court would have to consider as part of “[a] holistic analysis.” Id., at 192. Justice Thomas dissented in relevant part, contending that because “the legislature sought to achieve a [black voting-age population] of at least 55%,” race necessarily predominated in its decisionmaking. Id., at 198 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). But the Court did not join in that view, and Justice Thomas again dissents along the same lines today.
The second flaw in the dissent’s proposed approach is its inescapable consequence: Gingles must be overruled. According to the dissent, racial predominance plagues every single illustrative map ever adduced at the first step of Gingles. For all those maps were created with an express target in mind—they were created to show, as our cases require, that an additional majority-minority district could be drawn. That is the whole point of the enterprise. The upshot of the approach the dissent urges is not to change how Gingles is applied, but to reject its framework outright.
The contention that mapmakers must be entirely “blind” to race has no footing in our §2 case law. The line that we have long drawn is between consciousness and predominance. Plaintiffs adduced at least one illustrative map that comported with our precedents. They were required to do no more to satisfy the first step of Gingles.
2
The next condition Alabama would graft onto §2 is a requirement that plaintiffs demonstrate, at the totality of circumstances stage, that the State’s enacted plan contains fewer majority-minority districts than the race-neutral benchmark. Brief for Alabama 43. If it does not, then §2 should drop out of the picture. Id., at 44.
Alabama argues that is what should have happened here. It notes that one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Duchin, used an algorithm to create “2 million districting plans for Alabama … without taking race into account in any way in the generation process.” 2 App. 710. Of these two million “race-blind” plans, none contained two majority-black districts while many plans did not contain any. Ibid. Alabama also points to a “race-neutral” computer simulation conducted by another one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Kosuke Imai, which produced 30,000 potential maps. Brief for Alabama 55. As with Dr. Duchin’s maps, none of the maps that Dr. Imai created contained two majority-black districts. See 2 App. 571–572. Alabama thus contends that because HB1 sufficiently “resembles” the “race-neutral” maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai—all of the maps lack two majority-black districts—HB1 does not violate §2. Brief for Alabama 54.
Alabama’s reliance on the maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai is misplaced. For one, neither Duchin’s nor Imai’s maps accurately represented the districting process in Alabama. Dr. Duchin’s maps were based on old census data—from 2010 instead of 2020—and ignored certain traditional districting criteria, such as keeping together communities of interest, political subdivisions, or municipalities.[6] And Dr. Imai’s 30,000 maps failed to incorporate Alabama’s own districting guidelines, including keeping together communities of interest and preserving municipal boundaries. See Supp. App. 58–59.[7]
But even if the maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai were adequate comparators, we could not adopt the map-comparison test that Alabama proposes. The test is flawed in its fundamentals. Districting involves myriad considerations—compactness, contiguity, political subdivisions, natural geographic boundaries, county lines, pairing of incumbents, communities of interest, and population equality. See Miller, 515 U. S., at 916. Yet “[q]uantifying, measuring, prioritizing, and reconciling these criteria” requires map drawers to “make difficult, contestable choices.” Brief for Computational Redistricting Experts as Amici Curiae 8 (Redistricting Brief). And “[i]t is easy to imagine how different criteria could move the median map toward different … distributions,” meaning that “the same map could be [lawful] or not depending solely on what the mapmakers said they set out to do.” Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 27–28). For example, “the scientific literature contains dozens of competing metrics” on the issue of compactness. Redistricting Brief 8. Which one of these metrics should be used? What happens when the maps they produce yield different benchmark results? How are courts to decide?
Alabama does not say; it offers no rule or standard for determining which of these choices are better than others. Nothing in §2 provides an answer either. In 1982, the computerized mapmaking software that Alabama contends plaintiffs must use to demonstrate an (unspecified) level of deviation did not even exist. See, e.g., J. Chen & N. Stephanopoulos, The Race-Blind Future of Voting Rights, 130 Yale L. J. 862, 881–882 (2021) (Chen & Stephanopoulos). And neither the text of §2 nor the fraught debate that produced it suggests that “equal access” to the fundamental right of voting turns on computer simulations that are technically complicated, expensive to produce, and available to “[o]nly a small cadre of university researchers [that] have the resources and expertise to run” them. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28 (citing Chen & Stephanopoulos 882–884).[8]
One final point bears mentioning. Throughout these cases, Alabama has repeatedly emphasized that HB1 cannot have violated §2 because none of plaintiffs’ two million odd maps contained more than one majority-minority district. See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 1, 23, 30, 31, 54–56, 70, 79. The point is that two million is a very big number and that sheer volume matters. But as elsewhere, Alabama misconceives the math project that it expects courts to oversee. A brief submitted by three computational redistricting experts explains that the number of possible districting maps in Alabama is at least in the “trillion trillions.” Redistricting Brief 6, n. 7. Another publication reports that the number of potential maps may be orders of magnitude higher: “the universe of all possible connected, population-balanced districting plans that satisfy the state’s requirements,” it explains, “is likely in the range of googols.” Duchin & Spencer 768. Two million maps, in other words, is not many maps at all. And Alabama’s insistent reliance on that number, however powerful it may sound in the abstract, is thus close to irrelevant in practice. What would the next million maps show? The next billion? The first trillion of the trillion trillions? Answerless questions all. See, e.g., Redistricting Brief 2 (“[I]t is computationally intractable, and thus effectively impossible, to generate a complete enumeration of all potential districting plans. [Even] algorithms that attempt to create a manageable sample of that astronomically large universe do not consistently identify an average or median map.”); Duchin & Spencer 768 (“[A] comprehensive survey of [all districting plans within a State] is impossible.”).
Section 2 cannot require courts to judge a contest of computers when there is no reliable way to determine who wins, or even where the finish line is.
3
Alabama’s final contention with respect to the race-neutral benchmark is that it requires plaintiffs to demonstrate that any deviations between the State’s enacted plan and race-neutral alternatives “can be explained only by racial discrimination.” Brief for Alabama 44 (emphasis added).
We again find little merit in Alabama’s proposal. As we have already explained, our precedents and the legislative compromise struck in the 1982 amendments clearly rejected treating discriminatory intent as a requirement for liability under §2. See, e.g., Chisom, 501 U. S., at 403–404; Shaw, 509 U. S., at 641; Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 481–482 (1997). Yet Alabama’s proposal is even more demanding than the intent test Congress jettisoned. Demonstrating discriminatory intent, we have long held, “does not require a plaintiff to prove that the challenged action rested solely on racially discriminatory purpose[].” Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 265 (1977) (emphasis added); see also Reno, 520 U. S., at 488. Alabama’s proposed approach stands in sharp contrast to all this, injecting into the effects test of §2 an evidentiary standard that even our purposeful discrimination cases eschew.
C
Alabama finally asserts that the Court should outright stop applying §2 in cases like these because the text of §2 does not apply to single-member redistricting and because §2 is unconstitutional as the District Court applied it here. We disagree on both counts.
Alabama first argues that §2 does not apply to single-member redistricting. Echoing Justice Thomas’s concurrence in Holder v. Hall, Alabama reads §2’s reference to “standard, practice, or procedure” to mean only the “methods for conducting a part of the voting process that might … be used to interfere with a citizen’s ability to cast his vote.” 512 U. S., at 917–918 (opinion concurring in judgment). Examples of covered activities would include “registration requirements, … the locations of polling places, the times polls are open, the use of paper ballots as opposed to voting machines, and other similar aspects of the voting process.” Id., at 922. But not “a single-member districting system or the selection of one set of districting lines over another.” Id., at 923.
This understanding of §2 cannot be reconciled with our precedent. As recounted above, we have applied §2 to States’ districting maps in an unbroken line of decisions stretching four decades. See supra, at 11; see also Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___, n. 5 (slip op., at 7, n. 5) (collecting cases). In doing so, we have unanimously held that §2 and Gingles “[c]ertainly … apply” to claims challenging single-member districts. Growe, 507 U. S., at 40. And we have even invalidated portions of a State’s single-district map under §2. See LULAC, 548 U. S., at 427–429.[9] Alabama’s approach would require “abandoning” this precedent, “overruling the interpretation of §2” as set out in nearly a dozen of our cases. Holder, 512 U. S., at 944 (opinion of Thomas, J.).
We decline to take that step. Congress is undoubtedly aware of our construing §2 to apply to districting challenges. It can change that if it likes. But until and unless it does, statutory stare decisis counsels our staying the course. See, e.g., Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 456 (2015).[10]
The statutory text in any event supports the conclusion that §2 applies to single-member districts. Alabama’s own proffered definition of a “procedure is the manner or method of proceeding in a process or course of action.” Brief for Alabama 51 (internal quotation marks omitted). But the manner of proceeding in the act of voting entails determining in which districts voters will vote. The fact that the term “procedure” is preceded by the phrase “qualification or prerequisite to voting,” 52 U. S. C. §10301(a), does not change its meaning. It is hard to imagine many more fundamental “prerequisites” to voting than determining where to cast your ballot or who you are eligible to vote for. Perhaps for that reason, even Alabama does not bear the courage of its conviction on this point. It refuses to argue that §2 is inapplicable to multimember districting, though its textual arguments apply with equal force in that context.
The dissent, by contrast, goes where even Alabama does not dare, arguing that §2 is wholly inapplicable to districting because it “focuses on ballot access and counting” only. Post, at 2 (opinion of Thomas, J.). But the statutory text upon which the dissent relies supports the exact opposite conclusion. The relevant section provides that “[t]he terms ‘vote’ or ‘voting’ shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective.” Ibid. (quoting 52 U. S. C. §10310(c)(1); emphasis added). Those actions “includ[e], but [are] not limited to, … action[s] required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast.” §10310(c)(1). It would be anomalous to read the broad language of the statute—“all action necessary,” “including but not limited to”—to have the crabbed reach that Justice Thomas posits. And we have already discussed why determining where to cast a ballot constitutes a “prerequisite” to voting, as the statute requires.
The dissent also contends that “applying §2 to districting rests on systematic neglect of … the ballot-access focus of the 1960s’ voting-rights struggles.” Post, at 3 (opinion of Thomas, J.). But history did not stop in 1960. As we have explained, Congress adopted the amended §2 in response to the 1980 decision City of Mobile, a case about districting. And—as the dissent itself acknowledges—“Congress drew §2(b)’s current operative language” from the 1973 decision White v. Regester, post, at 4, n. 3 (opinion of Thomas, J.), a case that was also about districting (in fact, a case that invalidated two multimember districts in Texas and ordered them redrawn into single-member districts, 412 U. S., at 765). This was not lost on anyone when §2 was amended. Indeed, it was the precise reason that the contentious debates over proportionality raged—debates that would have made little sense if §2 covered only poll taxes and the like, as the dissent contends.
We also reject Alabama’s argument that §2 as applied to redistricting is unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment. According to Alabama, that Amendment permits Congress to legislate against only purposeful discrimination by States. See Brief for Alabama 73. But we held over 40 years ago “that, even if §1 of the [Fifteenth] Amendment prohibits only purposeful discrimination, the prior decisions of this Court foreclose any argument that Congress may not, pursuant to §2 [of the Fifteenth Amendment] outlaw voting practices that are discriminatory in effect.” City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 173 (1980). The VRA’s “ban on electoral changes that are discriminatory in effect,” we emphasized, “is an appropriate method of promoting the purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment.” Id., at 177. As City of Rome recognized, we had reached the very same conclusion in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, a decision issued right after the VRA was first enacted. 383 U. S., at 308–309, 329–337; see also Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3).
Alabama further argues that, even if the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes the effects test of §2, that Amendment does not authorize race-based redistricting as a remedy for §2 violations. But for the last four decades, this Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly applied the effects test of §2 as interpreted in Gingles and, under certain circumstances, have authorized race-based redistricting as a remedy for state districting maps that violate §2. See, e.g., supra, at 11; cf. Mississippi Republican Executive Committee v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002 (1984). In light of that precedent, including City of Rome, we are not persuaded by Alabama’s arguments that §2 as interpreted in Gingles exceeds the remedial authority of Congress.
The concern that §2 may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the States is, of course, not new. See, e.g., Shaw, 509 U. S., at 657 (“Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.”). Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns. It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here. *** The judgments of the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in the Caster case, and of the three-judge District Court in the Milligan case, are affirmed.
- ↑ Justice Kavanaugh joins all but Part III–B–1 of this opinion.
- ↑ As originally enacted, §2 provided that “[n]o voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 42 U. S. C. §1973 (1970 ed.).
- ↑ Judge Manasco, presiding in Caster, also preliminarily enjoined Alabama from using HB1. Her opinion was based on the same evidentiary record as was before the three-judge Court, and it adopted in full that Court’s “recitation of the evidence, legal analysis, findings of fact and conclusions of law.” 1 App. to Emergency Application for Stay in No. 2:21–cv–1536, p. 4; see also 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 942–943, and n. 4. Any reference to the “District Court” in this opinion applies to the Caster Court as well as to the three-judge Court.
- ↑ The principal dissent complains that “what the District Court did here is essentially no different from what many courts have done for decades under this Court’s superintendence.” Post, at 47 (opinion of Thomas, J.). That is not such a bad definition of stare decisis.
- ↑ Despite this all, the dissent argues that courts have apparently been “methodically carving the country into racially designated electoral districts” for decades. Post, at 48 (opinion of Thomas, J.). And that, the dissent inveighs, “should inspire us to repentance.” Ibid. But proportional representation of minority voters is absent from nearly every corner of this country despite §2 being in effect for over 40 years. And in case after case, we have rejected districting plans that would bring States closer to proportionality when those plans violate traditional districting criteria. See supra, at 19–21. It seems it is the dissent that is “quixotically joust[ing] with an imaginary adversary.” Post, at 47 (opinion of Thomas, J.).
- ↑ The dissent claims that Cooper “treated ‘the minority population in and of itself’ as the paramount community of interest in his plans.” Post, at 14 (opinion of Thomas, J.) (quoting 2 App. 601). But Cooper testified that he was “aware that the minority population in and of itself can be a community of interest.” Id., at 601 (emphasis added). Cooper then explained that the relevant community of interest here—the Black Belt—was a “historical feature” of the State, not a demographic one. Ibid. (emphasis added). The Black Belt, he emphasized, was defined by its “historical boundaries”—namely, the group of “rural counties plus Montgomery County in the central part of the state.” Ibid. The District Court treated the Black Belt as a community of interest for the same reason.
The dissent also protests that Cooper’s “plans prioritized race over neutral districting criteria.” Post, at 14 (opinion of Thomas, J.). But as the District Court found, and as Alabama does not contest, Cooper’s maps satisfied other traditional criteria, such as compactness, contiguity, equal populations, and respect for political subdivisions.
- ↑ Dr. Duchin created her two million map sample as part of an academic article that she helped author, not for her work on this case, and the article was neither entered into evidence below nor made part of the record here. See 2 App. 710; see also M. Duchin & D. Spencer, Models, Race, and the Law, 130 Yale L. J. Forum 744, 763–764 (2021) (Duchin & Spencer).
- ↑ The principal dissent decrees that Dr. Duchin’s and Dr. Imai’s maps are “surely probative,” forgiving the former’s use of stale census data as well as both mapmakers’ collective failure to incorporate many traditional districting guidelines. Post, at 23–24, and n. 14 (opinion of Thomas, J.); see also post, at 15, n. 9, 16. In doing so, that dissent ignores Dr. Duchin’s testimony that—when using the correct census data—the “randomized algorithms” she employed “found plans with two majority-black districts in literally thousands of different ways.” MSA 316–317. The principal dissent and the dissent by Justice Alito also ignore Duchin’s testimony that “it is certainly possible” to draw the illustrative maps she produced in a race-blind manner. 2 App. 713. In that way, even the race-blind standard that the dissents urge would be satisfied here. See post, at 21 (opinion of Thomas, J.); post, at 6 (opinion of Alito, J.). So too could that standard be satisfied in every §2 case; after all, as Duchin explained, any map produced in a deliberately race-predominant manner would necessarily emerge at some point in a random, race-neutral process. 2 App. 713. And although Justice Alito voices support for an “old-school approach” to §2, even that approach cannot be squared with his understanding of Gingles. Post, at 6. The very reason a plaintiff adduces a map at the first step of Gingles is precisely because of its racial composition—that is, because it creates an additional majority-minority district that does not then exist.
- ↑ None of this is to suggest that algorithmic mapmaking is categorically irrelevant in voting rights cases. Instead, we note only that, in light of the difficulties discussed above, courts should exercise caution before treating results produced by algorithms as all but dispositive of a §2 claim. And in evaluating algorithmic evidence more generally in this context, courts should be attentive to the concerns we have discussed.
- ↑ The dissent suggests that Growe does not support the proposition that §2 applies to single-member redistricting. Post, at 4–5 (opinion of Thomas, J.). The Court has understood Growe much differently. See, e.g., Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U. S. 74, 90 (1997) (“Our decision in [Gingles] set out the basic framework for establishing a vote dilution claim against at-large, multimembers districts; we have since extended the framework to single-member districts.” (citing Growe, 507 U. S., at 40–41)); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1006 (1994) (“In Growe, we held that a claim of vote dilution in a single-member district requires proof meeting the same three threshold conditions for a dilution challenge to a multimember district….”); Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U. S. 1, 12 (plurality opinion) (“The Court later held that the three Gingles requirements apply equally in §2 cases involving single-member districts….” (citing Growe, 507 U. S., at 40–41)).
- ↑ Justice Alito argues that “[t]he Gingles framework should be [re]interpreted” in light of changing methods in statutory interpretation. Post, at 10 (dissenting opinion). But as we have explained, Gingles effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that §2 embodies. And statutory stare decisis counsels strongly in favor of not “undo[ing] … the compromise that was reached between the House and Senate when §2 was amended in 1982.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 22).