Thomas, J., dissenting
D
Given all this, by what benchmark did the District Court find that Alabama’s enacted plan was dilutive? The answer is as simple as it is unlawful: The District Court applied a benchmark of proportional control based on race. To be sure, that benchmark was camouflaged by the elaborate vote-dilution framework we have inherited from Gingles. But nothing else in that framework or in the District Court’s reasoning supplies an alternative benchmark capable of explaining the District Court’s bottom line: that Alabama’s one-majority-black-district map dilutes black voters’ fair share of political power.
Under Gingles, the majority explains, there are three “preconditions” to a vote-dilution claim: (1) the relevant “minority group must be sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district”; (2) the minority group must be “politically cohesive”; and (3) the majority group must “vot[e] sufficiently as a bloc to enable it to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate[s].” Ante, at 10 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). If these preconditions are satisfied, Gingles instructs courts to “consider the totality of the circumstances and to determine, based upon a searching practical evaluation of the past and present reality, whether the political process is equally open to minority voters.” 478 U. S., at 79 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
The majority gives the impression that, in applying this framework, the District Court merely followed a set of well-
Duchin explained, she programmed them with “an algorithmic preference” for “plans in which there would be a second majority-minority district.” 2 App. 709. Thus, all that those algorithmic results prove is that it is possible to draw two majority-black districts in Alabama if one sets out to do so, especially with the help of sophisticated mapmaking software. What is still lacking is any justification for treating a two-majority-black-district map as a proxy for the undiluted benchmark.
