Thomas, J., dissenting
multimember and at-large plans must limit challenges to single-member districts with at least the same force, as “[i]t would be peculiar [if] a vote-dilution challenge to the (more dangerous) multimember district require[d] a higher threshold showing than a vote-fragmentation challenge to a single-member district.” Id., at 40. Growe did not consider (or, thus, reject) an argument that §2 does not apply to single-member districts.
In any event, stare decisis should be no barrier to reconsidering a line of cases that “was based on a flawed method of statutory construction from its inception,” has proved incapable of principled application after nearly four decades of experience, and puts federal courts in the business of “methodically carving the country into racially designated electoral districts.” Holder, 512 U. S., at 945 (opinion of Thomas, J.). This Court has “never applied stare decisis mechanically to prohibit overruling our earlier decisions determining the meaning of statutes,” and it should not do so here. Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 695 (1978). Stare decisis did not save “separate but equal,” despite its repeated reaffirmation in this Court and the pervasive reliance States had placed upon it for decades. See, e.g., Brief for Appellees in Brown v. Board of Education, O. T. 1953, No. 1, pp. 18–30. It should not rescue modern-day forms of de jure racial balkanization—which, as these cases show, is exactly where our §2 vote-dilution jurisprudence has led.[1]
- ↑ Justice Kavanaugh’s partial concurrence emphasizes the supposedly enhanced stare decisis force of statutory-interpretation precedents. See ante, at 1–2. This emphasis is puzzling in several respects. As an initial matter, I can perceive no conceptual “basis for applying a heightened version of stare decisis to statutory-interpretation decisions”; rather, “our judicial duty is to apply the law to the facts of the case, regardless of how easy it is for the law to change.” Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) (slip op., at 14). Nor does that approach appear to have any historical foundation in judicial practice at
