Lead Opinion
announced the judgment of
This case requires us to interpret §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,79 Stat. 487, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973 (2000 ed.). The question is whether the statute can be invoked to require state officials to draw election-district
The ease arises in a somewhat unusual posture. State authorities who created a district now invoke the Voting Rights Act as a defense. They argue that §2 required them to draw the district in question in a particular way, despite state laws to the contrary. The state laws are provisions of the North Carolina Constitution that prohibit the General Assembly from dividing counties when drawing legislative districts for the State House and Senate. Art. II, §§3, 5. We will adopt the term used by the state courts and refer to both sections of the State Constitution as the Whole County Provision. See Pender County v. Bartlett,
It is common ground that state election-law requirements like the Whole County Provision may be superseded by federal law — for instance, the one-person, one-vote principle of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. See Reynolds v. Sims,
We begin with the election district. The North Carolina House of Representatives is the larger of the two chambers in the State’s General Assembly. District 18 of that body lies in the southeastern part of North Carolina. Starting in 1991, the General Assembly drew District 18 to include portions of four counties, including Pender County, in order to create a district with a majority African-American voting-age population and to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. Following the 2000 census, the North Carolina Supreme Court, to comply with the Whole County Provision, rejected the General Assembly’s first two statewide redistricting plans. See Stephenson v. Bartlett,
District 18 in its present form emerged from the General Assembly’s third redistricting attempt, in 2003. By that time the African-American voting-age population had fallen below 50 percent in the district as then drawn, and the General Assembly no longer could draw a geographically compact majority-minority district. Rather than draw District 18 to keep Pender County whole, however, the General Assembly drew it by splitting portions of Pender and New Hanover counties. District 18 has an African-American voting-age population of 39.36 percent. App. 139. Had it left Pender County whole, the General Assembly could have drawn District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 35.33 percent. Id., at 73. The General Assembly’s reason for splitting Pender County was to give African-American voters the potential to join with majority voters to elect the minority group’s candidate of its choice. Ibid. Failure to do so, state officials now submit, would have diluted the minority group’s voting strength in violation of § 2.
In May 2004, Pender County and the five members of its board of commissioners filed the instant suit in North Carolina state court against the Governor of North Carolina, the Director of the State Board of Elections, and other state officials. The plaintiffs alleged that the 2003 plan violated the Whole County Provision by splitting Pender County into two House districts. Id., at 5-14. The state-official defendants answered that dividing Pender County was required by § 2. Id., at 25. As the trial court recognized, the procedural posture of
The trial court first considered whether the defendant state officials had established the three threshold requirements for § 2 liability under Thornburg v. Gingles,
As to the first Gingles requirement, the trial court concluded that, although African-Americans were not a majority of the voting-age population in District 18, the district was a “de facto” majority-minority district because African-Americans could get enough support from crossover majority voters to elect the African-Americans’ preferred candidate. The court ruled that African-Americans in District 18 were politically cohesive, thus satisfying the second requirement. And later, the plaintiffs stipulated that the third Gingles requirement was met. App. to Pet. for Cert. 102a-103a, 130a. The court then determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that §2 required the General Assembly to split Pender County. The court sustained the lines for District 18 on that rationale. Id., at 116a-118a.
Three of the Pender County Commissioners appealed the trial court’s ruling that the defendants had established the first Gingles requirement. The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed. It held that a “minority group must constitute a numerical majority of the voting population in the area under consideration before Section 2 . . . requires the creation of a legislative district to prevent dilution of the votes of that minority group.”
We granted certiorari,
II
Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an important step in the struggle to end discriminatory treatment of minorities who seek to exercise one of the most fundamental rights of our citizens: the right to vote. Though the Act as a whole was the subject of debate and controversy, §2 prompted little criticism. The likely explanation for its general acceptance is that, as first enacted, §2 tracked, in part, the text of the Fifteenth Amendment. It prohibited practices “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.” 79 Stat. 437; cf. U. S. Const., Arndt. 15 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”); see also S. Rep. No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 19-20 (1965). In Mobile v. Bolden,
In 1982, after the Mobile ruling, Congress amended §2, giving the statute its current form. The original Act had employed an intent requirement, prohibiting only those practices “imposed or applied ... to deny or abridge” the right to vote. 79 Stat. 437. The amended version of § 2 requires consideration of effects, as it prohibits practices “imposed or applied ... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment” of the right to vote. 96 Stat. 134, 42 U. S. C. § 1973(a) (2000 ed.). The 1982 amendments also added a subsection, §2(b), providing a test for determining whether a §2 violation has occurred. The relevant text of the statute now states:
“(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 [or membership in a language minority group], as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
“(b) A violation of subsection (a) of this section 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 protected by subsection (a) of this section 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.” 42 U.S. C. §1973.
This Court first construed the amended version of §2 in Thornburg v. Gingles,
The Court later held that the three Gingles requirements apply equally in § 2 cases involving single-member districts, such as a claim alleging vote dilution because a geographically compact minority group has been split between two or more single-member districts. Growe v. Emison,
Ill
A
This case turns on whether the first Gingles requirement can be satisfied when the minority group makes up less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the potential election district. The parties
At the outset the answer might not appear difficult to reach, for the Gingles Court said the minority group must “demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.”
It is appropriate to review the terminology often used to describe various features of election districts in relation to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. In majority-minority districts, a minority group composes a numerical, working majority of the voting-age population. Under present doctrine, §2 can require the creation of these districts. See, e. g., Voinovich, supra, at 154 (“Placing black voters in a district in which they constitute a sizeable and therefore ‘safe’ majority ensures that they are able to elect their candidate of choice”); but see Holder v. Hall,
The present case involves an intermediate type of district — a so-called crossover district. Like an influence district, a crossover district is one in which minority voters make up less than a majority of the voting-age population. But in a crossover district, the minority population, at least potentially, is large enough to elect the candidate of its choice with help from voters who are members of the majority and who cross over to support the minority’s preferred candidate.
Petitioners argue that although crossover districts do not include a numerical majority of minority voters, they still satisfy the first Gingles requirement because they are “effective minority districts.” Under petitioners’ theory keeping Pender County whole would have violated §2 by cracking the potential crossover district that they drew as District 18. See Gingles, supra, at 46, n. 11 (vote dilution “may be caused by the dispersal of blacks into districts in which they constitute an ineffective minority of voters”). So, petitioners contend, §2 required them to override state law and split Pender County, drawing District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 39.36 percent rather than keeping Pender County whole and leaving District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 35.33 percent. We reject that claim.
First, we conclude, petitioners’ theory is contrary to the mandate of § 2. The statute requires a showing that minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to . . . elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.). But because they form only 39 percent of the voting-age population in District 18, African-Americans standing alone have no better or worse opportunity to elect a candidate than does any other group of voters with the same relative voting strength. That is, African-Americans in District 18 have the opportunity to join other voters — including other racial minorities, or whites, or both — to reach a majority and elect their preferred candidate. They cannot, however, elect that candidate based on their own votes and without assistance from others. Recognizing a § 2 claim in this circumstance would grant minority voters “a right to preserve their strength for the purposes of forging an advantageous political alliance.” Hall v. Virginia,
Although the Court has reserved the question we confront today and has cautioned that the Gingles requirements “cannot be applied mechanically,” Voinovich, supra, at 158, the reasoning of our cases does not support petitioners’ claims. Section 2 does not impose on those who draw election districts a duty to give minority voters the most potential, or the best potential, to elect a candidate by attracting crossover voters. In setting out the first requirement for §2 claims, the Gingles Court explained that “[ujnless minority voters possess the potential to elect representatives in the absence of the challenged structure or practice, they cannot claim to have been injured by that structure or practice.”
“[Rjeading §2 to define dilution as any failure to maximize tends to obscure the very object of the statute and to run counter to its textually stated purpose. One may suspect vote dilution from political famine, but one is not entitled to suspect (much less infer) dilution from mere failure to guarantee a political feast.” Id., at 1016-1017.
Allowing crossover-district claims would require us to revise and reformulate the Gingles threshold inquiry that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence. Mandatory recognition of claims in which success for a minority depends upon crossover majority voters would create serious tension with the third Gingles requirement that the majority votes as a bloc to defeat minority-preferred candidates. It is difficult to see how the majority-bloc-voting requirement could be met in a district where, by definition, white voters join in sufficient numbers with minority voters to elect the minority’s preferred candidate. (We are skeptical that the bloc-voting test could be satisfied here, for example, where minority voters in District 18 cannot elect their candidate of choice without support from almost 20 percent of white voters. We do not confront that issue, however, because for some reason respondents conceded the third Gingles requirement in state court.)
As the Gingles Court explained, “in the absence of significant white bloc voting it cannot be said that the ability of minority voters to elect their chosen representatives is inferior to that of white voters.”
We find support for the majority-minority requirement in the need for workable standards and sound judicial and legislative administration. The rule draws clear lines for courts and legislatures alike. The same cannot be said of a less exacting standard that would mandate crossover districts under § 2. Determining whether a § 2 claim would lie — i. e,, determining whether potential districts could function as crossover districts — would place courts in the untenable position of predicting many political variables and tying them to race-based assumptions. The Judiciary would be directed to make predictions or adopt premises that even experienced polling
Heightening these concerns even further is the fact that §2 applies nationwide to every jurisdiction that must draw lines for election districts required by state or local law. Crossover-district claims would require courts to make predictive political judgments not only about familiar, two-party contests in large districts but also about regional and local jurisdictions that often feature more than two parties or candidates. Under petitioners’ view courts would face the difficult task of discerning crossover patterns in nonpartisan contests for a city commission, a school board, or a local water authority. The political data necessary to make such determinations are nonexistent for elections in most of those jurisdictions. And predictions would be speculative at best given that, especially in the context of local elections, voters’ personal affiliations with candidates and views on particular issues can play a large role.
Unlike any of the standards proposed to allow crossover-district claims, the majority-minority rule relies on an objective, numerical test: Do minorities make up more than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the relevant geographic area? That rule provides straightforward guidance to courts and to those officials charged with drawing district lines to comply with §2. See LULAC, supra, at 485 (opinion of Souter, J.) (recognizing need for “clear-edged rule”). Where an election district could be drawn in which minority voters form a majority but such a district is not drawn, or where a majority-minority district is cracked by assigning some voters elsewhere, then — assuming the other Gingles factors are also satisfied — denial of the opportunity to elect a candidate of choice is a present and discernible wrong that is not subject to the high degree of speculation and prediction attendant upon the analysis of crossover claims. Not an arbitrary invention, the majority-minority rule has its foundation in principles of democratic governance. The special significance, in the democratic process, of a majority means it is a special wrong when a minority group has 50 percent or more of the voting population and could constitute a compact voting majority but, despite racially polarized
Given the text of § 2, our cases interpreting that provision, and the many difficulties in assessing §2 claims without the restraint and guidance provided by the majority-minority rule, no federal court of appeals has held that §2 requires creation of coalition districts. Instead, all to consider the question have interpreted the first Gingles factor to require a majority-minority standard. See Hall,
To be sure, the Gingles requirements “cannot be applied mechanically and without regard to the nature of the claim.” Voinovich,
B
In arguing for a less restrictive interpretation of the first Gingles requirement petitioners point to the text of §2 and its guarantee that political processes be “equally open to participation” to protect minority voters’ “opportunity... to elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.). An “opportunity,” petitioners argue, occurs in crossover districts as well as majority-minority districts; and these extended opportunities, they say, require §2 protection.
But petitioners put emphasis on the word “opportunity” at the expense of the word “equally.” The statute does not protect any possible opportunity or mechanism through which minority voters could work with other constituencies to elect their candidate of choice. Section 2 does not guarantee minority voters an electoral advantage. Minority groups in crossover districts cannot form a voting majority without crossover voters. In those districts minority voters have the same opportunity to elect their candidate as any
The majority-minority rule, furthermore, is not at odds with §2’s totality-of-the-circumstances test. The Court in De Grandy confirmed “the error of treating the three Gingles conditions as exhausting the enquiry required by §2.”
To the extent there is any doubt whether § 2 calls for the majority-minority rule, we resolve that doubt by avoiding serious constitutional concerns under the Equal Protection Clause. See Clark v. Martinez,
On petitioners’ view of the case courts and legislatures would need to scrutinize every factor that enters into districting to gauge its effect on crossover voting. Injecting this racial measure into the nationwide districting process would be of particular concern with respect to consideration of party registration or party influence. The easiest and most likely alliance for a group of minority voters is one with a political party, and some have suggested using minority voters’ strength within a particular party as the proper yardstick under the first Gingles requirement. See, e.g., LULAC, supra, at 485-486 (opinion of Souter, J.) (requiring only “that minority voters ... constitute a majority of those voting in the primary of... the party tending to win in the general election”). That approach would replace an objective, administrable rule with a difficult “judicial inquiry into party rules and local politics” to determine whether a minority group truly “controls” the dominant party’s primary process. McLoughlin, Gingles in Limbo: Coalitional Districts, Party Primaries and Manageable Vote Dilution Claims, 80 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 312, 349 (2005). More troubling still is the inquiry's
Petitioners’ approach would reverse the canon of avoidance. It invites the divisive constitutional questions that are both unnecessary and contrary to the purposes of our precedents under the Voting Rights Act. Given the consequences of extending racial considerations even further into the districting process, we must not interpret § 2 to require crossover districts.
C
Our holding that §2 does not require crossover districts does not consider the permissibility of such districts as a matter of legislative choice or discretion. Assuming a majority-minority district with a substantial minority population, a legislative determination, based on proper factors, to create two crossover districts may serve to diminish the significance and influence of race by encouraging minority and majority voters to work together toward a common goal. The option to draw such districts gives legislatures a choice that can lead to less racial isolation, not more. And as the Court has noted in the context of §5 of the Voting Rights Act, “various studies have suggested that the most effective way to maximize minority voting strength may be to create more influence or [crossover] districts.” Ashcroft,
Our holding also should not be interpreted to entrench majority-minority districts by statutory command, for that, too, could pose constitutional concerns. See Miller v. Johnson, supra; Shaw v. Reno,
Petitioners claim the majority-minority rule is inconsistent with § 5, but we rejected a similar argument in LULAC,
IV
Some commentators suggest that racially polarized voting is waning — as evidenced by, for example, the election of minority candidates where a majority of voters are white. See Note, The Future of Majority-Minority Districts in Light of Declining Racially Polarized Voting, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 2208, 2209 (2003); see also id., at 2216-2222; Pildes 1529-1539; Bullock & Dunn, The Demise of Racial Districting and the Future of Black Representation, 48 Emory L. J. 1209 (1999). Still, racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history. Much remains to be done to ensure that citizens of all races have equal opportunity to share and participate in our democratic processes and traditions; and §2 must be interpreted to ensure that continued progress.
It would be an irony, however, if §2 were interpreted to entrench racial differences by expanding a “statute meant to hasten the waning of racism in American politics.” De Grandy,
It is so ordered.
I continue to adhere to the views expressed in my opinion in Holder v. Hall,
The question in this case is whether a minority with under 50% of the voting population of a proposed voting district can ever qualify under §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) as residents of a putative district whose minority voters would have an opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.). If the answer is no, minority voters in such a district will have no right to claim relief under §2 from a statewide districting scheme that dilutes minority voting rights. I would hold that the answer in law as well as in fact is sometimes yes: a district may be a minority-opportunity district so long as a cohesive minority population is large enough to elect its chosen candidate when combined with a reliable number of crossover voters from an otherwise polarized majority.
In the plurality’s view, only a district with a minority population making up 50% or more of the citizen voting age population (CVAP) can provide a remedy to minority voters lacking an opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice.” This is incorrect as a factual matter if the statutory phrase is given its natural meaning; minority voters in districts with minority populations under 50% routinely “elect representatives of their choice.” The effects of the plurality’s unwillingness to face this fact are disturbing by any measure and flatly at odds with the obvious purpose of the VRA. If districts with minority populations under 50% can never count as minority-opportunity districts to remedy a violation of the States’ obligation to provide equal electoral opportunity under § 2, States will be required under the plurality’s rule to pack black voters into additional majority-minority districts, contracting the number of districts where racial minorities are having success in transcending racial divisions in securing their preferred representation. The object of the VRA will now be promoting racial blocs, and the role of race in districting decisions as a proxy for political identification will be heightened by any measure.
I
Recalling the basic premises of vote-dilution claims under §2 will show just
Since § 2 was amended in 1982, 96 Stat. 134, we have read it to prohibit practices that result in “vote dilution,” see Thornburg v. Gingles,
Three points follow. First, to speak of a fair chance to get the representation desired, there must be an identifiable baseline for measuring a group’s voting strength. Id., at 88 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (“In order to evaluate a claim that a particular multimember district or single-member district has diluted the minority group’s voting strength to a degree that violates §2, . . . it is . . . necessary to construct a measure of 'undiluted' minority voting strength”). Several baselines can be imagined; one could, for example, compare a minority’s voting strength under a particular districting plan with the maximum strength possible under any alternative.
Second, the significance of proportionality means that a § 2 claim must be assessed by looking at the overall effect of a multidistrict plan. A State with one congressional seat cannot dilute a minority’s congressional vote, and only the systemic submergence of minority votes where a number of single-member districts could be drawn can be treated as harm under §2. So a §2 complaint must look to an entire districting plan (normally, statewide), alleging that the challenged plan creates an insufficient number of minority-opportunity districts in the territory as a whole. See id., at 436-437.
Third, while a § 2 violation ultimately results from the dilutive effect of a districting plan as a whole, a §2 plaintiff must also be able to place himself in a reasonably compact district that could have been drawn to improve upon the plan actually selected. See, e.g., De Grandy, supra, at 1001-1002. That is, a plaintiff must show both an overall deficiency and a personal injury open to redress.
Our first essay at understanding these features of statutory vote dilution was Thornburg v. Gingles, which asked whether a multimember district plan for choosing representatives by at-large voting deprived minority voters of an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. In answering, we set three now-familiar conditions that a §2 claim must meet at the threshold before a court will analyze it under the totality of circumstances:
“First, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.... Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive. . . . Third, the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”478 U. S., at 50-51 .
As we have emphasized over and over, the Gingles conditions do not state the ultimate standard under §2, nor could they, since the totality of the circumstances standard has been set explicitly by Congress. See LULAC, supra, at 425-426; De Grandy, supra, at 1011. Instead, each condition serves as a gatekeeper, ensuring that a plaintiff who proceeds to plenary review has a real chance to show a redressable violation of the ultimate §2 standard. The third condition, majority racial bloc voting, is necessary to establish the premise of vote-dilution claims: that the minority as a whole is placed at a disadvantage owing to race, not the happenstance of independent politics. Gingles,
II
Though this case arose under the Constitution of North Carolina, the dispositive issue is one of federal statutory law: whether a district with a minority population under 50%, but large enough to elect its chosen candidate with the help of majority voters disposed to support the minority favorite, can ever count as a district where minority voters have the opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice” for purposes of §2. I think it clear from the nature of a vote-dilution claim and the text of §2 that the answer must be yes. There is nothing in the statutory text to suggest that Congress meant to protect minority opportunity to elect solely by the creation of majority-minority districts. See Voinovich v. Quilter,
It has been apparent from the moment the Court first took up §2 that no reason exists in the statute to treat a crossover district as a less legitimate remedy for dilution than a majority-minority one (let alone to rule it out). See Gingles, supra, at 90, n. 1 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (“[I]f a minority group that is not large enough to constitute a voting majority in a single-member district can show that white support would probably... enable the election of the candidates its members prefer, that minority group would appear to have demonstrated that, at least under this measure of its voting strength, it would be able to elect some candidates of its choice”); see also Pildes, Is Voting-Rights Law Now at War With Itself? Social Science and Voting Rights in the 2000s, 80 N. C. L. Rev. 1517, 1553 (2002) (hereinafter Pildes) (“What should be so magical, then, about whether there are enough black voters to become a formal majority so that a conventional ‘safe’ district can be created? If a safe and a coalitional district have the same probability of electing a black candidate, are they not functionally identical, by definition, with respect to electing such candidates?”).
As these earlier comments as much as say, whether a district with a minority population under 50% of the CVAP may redress a violation of § 2 is a question of fact with an obvious answer: of course minority voters constituting less than 50% of the voting population can have an opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice, as amply shown by empirical studies confirming that such minority groups regularly elect their preferred candidates with the help of modest crossover by members of the majority. See, e.g., id., at 1531-1534, 1538. The North Carolina Supreme Court, for example, determined that voting districts with a black voting age population of as little as 38.37% have an opportunity to elect black candidates, Pender Cty. v. Bartlett,
It is of course true that the threshold population sufficient to provide minority voters with an opportunity to elect their candidates of choice is elastic, and the proportions 'will likely shift in the future, as they have in the past. See Pildes 1527-1532 (explaining that blacks in the 1980s required well over 50% of the population in a district to elect the candidates of their choice, but that this number has gradually fallen to well below 50%); id., at 1527, n. 26 (stating that some courts went so far as to refer to 65% “as a ‘rule of thumb’ for the black population required to constitute a safe district”). That is, racial polarization has declined, and if it continues downward the first Gingles condition will get easier to satisfy.
But this is no reason to create an arbitrary threshold; the functional approach will continue to allow dismissal of claims for districts with minority populations too small to demonstrate an ability to elect, and with “crossovers” too numerous to allow an inference of vote dilution in the first place. No one, for example, would argue based on the record of experience in this case that a district with a 25% black population would meet the first Gingles condition. And the third Gingles requirement, majority-bloc voting, may well provide an analytical limit to claims based on crossover districts. See LULAC,
In fact, a crossover district is better. Recognizing crossover districts has the value of giving States greater flexibility to draw districting plans with a fair number of minority-opportunity districts, and this in turn allows for a beneficent reduction in the number of majority-minority districts with their “quintessentially race-conscious calculus,” De Grandy,
Ill
A
The plurality’s contrary conclusion that § 2 does not recognize a crossover claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of vote-dilution claims, a mistake epitomized in the following assessment of the crossover district in question:
“[Bjecause they form only 39 percent of the voting-age population in District 18, African-Americans standing alone have no better or worse opportunity to elect a candidate than does any other group of voters with the same relative voting strength [in District 18].” Ante, at 14.
See also ante, at 20 (“[In crossover districts,] minority voters have the same opportunity to elect their candidate as any other political group with the same relative voting strength”).
The claim that another political group in a particular district might have the same relative voting strength as the minority if it had the same share of the population takes the form of a tautology: the plurality simply looks to one district and says that a 39% group of blacks is no worse off than a 39% group of whites would be. This statement might be true, or it might not be, and standing alone it demonstrates nothing.
Even if the two 39% groups were assumed to be comparable in fact because they will attract sufficient crossover (and so should be credited with satisfying the first Gingles condition), neither of them could prove a §2 violation without looking beyond the 39% district and showing a disproportionately small potential for success in the State’s overall configuration of districts. As this Court has explained before, the ultimate question in a § 2 case (that is, whether the minority group in question is being denied an equal opportunity to participate and elect) can be answered only by examining the broader pattern of districts to see whether the minority is being denied a roughly proportionate opportunity. See LULAC, supra, at 436-437. Hence, saying one group’s 39% equals another’s, even if true in particular districts where facts are known, does not mean that either, both, or neither group could show a § 2 violation. The plurality simply fails to grasp that an alleged § 2 violation can only be proved or disproved by looking statewide.
B
The plurality’s more specific justifications for its counter-factual position are no more supportable than its 39% tautology.
1
The plurality seems to suggest that our prior cases somehow require its conclusion that a minority population under 50% will never support a § 2 remedy, emphasizing that Gingles spoke of a majority and referred to the requirement that minority voters have “ ‘the potential to elect’ ” their chosen representatives. Ante, at 15 (quoting Gingles,
In any event, even if we ignored Gingles’s reservation of today’s question and looked to Gingles’s “potential to elect” as if it were statutory text, I fail to see how that phrase dictates that a minority’s ability to compete must be single-handed in order to count under §2. As explained already, a crossover district serves the same interest in obtaining representation as a majority-minority district; the potential of 45% with a 6% crossover promises the same result as 51% with no crossover, and there is nothing in the logic of §2 to allow a distinction between the two types of district.
In fact, the plurality’s distinction is artificial on its own terms. In the past, when black voter registration and black voter turnout were relatively low, even black voters with 55% of a district’s CVAP would have had to rely on crossover voters to elect their candidate of choice. See Pildes 1527-1528. But no one on this Court (and, so far as I am aware, any other court addressing it) ever suggested that reliance on crossover voting in such a district rendered minority success any less significant under §2, or meant that the district failed to satisfy the first Gingles factor. Nor would it be any answer to say that black voters in such a district, assuming unrealistic voter turnout, theoretically had the “potential” to elect their candidate without crossover support; that would be about as relevant as arguing in the abstract that a black CVAP of 45% is potentially successful, on the assumption that black voters could turn out en masse to elect the candidate of their choice without reliance on crossovers if enough majority voters stay home.
2
The plurality is also concerned that recognizing the “potential” of anything under 50% would entail an exponential expansion of special minority districting; the plurality goes so far as to suggest that recognizing crossover districts as possible minority-opportunity districts would inherently “entitl[e] minority groups to the maximum possible voting strength.” Ante, at 15-16. But this conclusion again reflects a confusion of the gatekeeping function of the Gingles conditions with the ultimate test for relief under §2. See ante, at 14 (“African-Americans standing alone have no better or worse opportunity to elect a candidate than does any other group of voters with the same relative voting strength”).
As already explained, swpra, at 31, the mere fact that all threshold Gingles conditions could be met and a district could be drawn with a minority population sufficiently large to elect the candidate of its choice does not require drawing such a district. This case simply is about the first Gingles condition, not about the number of minority-opportunity districts needed under §2, and accepting Bartlett’s position would in no way imply an obligation to maximize districts with minority voter potential. Under any interpretation of the first Gingles factor, the State must draw districts in a way that provides minority voters with a fair number of districts in
3
The plurality’s fear of maximization finds a parallel in the concern that treating crossover districts as minority-opportunity districts would “create serious tension” with the third Gingles prerequisite of majority-bloc voting. Ante, at 16. The plurality finds “[i]t . . . difficult to see how the majority-bloc-voting requirement could be met in a district where, by definition, white voters join in sufficient numbers with minority voters to elect the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid.
It is not difficult to see. If a minority population with 49% of the CVAP can elect the candidate of its choice with crossover by 2% of white voters, the minority “by definition” relies on white support to elect its preferred candidate. But this fact alone would raise no doubt, as a matter of definition or otherwise, that the majority-bloc-voting requirement could be met, since as much as 98% of the majority may have voted against the minority’s candidate of choice. As explained above, supra, at 34, the third Gingles condition may well impose an analytical floor to the minority population and a ceiling on the degree of crossover allowed in a crossover district; that is, the concept of majority-bloc voting requires that majority voters tend to stick together in a relatively high degree. The precise standard for determining majority-bloc voting is not at issue in this case, however; to reflate the plurality’s 50% rule, one need only recognize that racial cohesion of 98% would be bloc voting by any standard.
4
The plurality argues that qualifying crossover districts as minority-opportunity districts would be less administrable than demanding 50%, forcing courts to engage with the various factual and predictive questions that would come up in determining what percentage of majority voters would provide the voting minority with a chance at electoral success. Ante, at 17. But claims based on a State's failure to draw majority-minority districts raise the same issues of judicial judgment; even when the 50% threshold is satisfied, a court will still have to engage in factually messy enquiries about the “potential” such a district may afford, the degree of minority cohesion and majority-bloc voting, and the existence of vote dilution under a totality of the circumstances. See supra, at 30-31, 33-34. The plurality’s rule, therefore, conserves an uncertain amount of judicial resources, and only at the expense of ignoring a class of § 2 claims that this Court has no authority to strike from the statute’s coverage.
5
The plurality again misunderstands the nature of §2 in suggesting that its rule
6
Finally, the plurality tries to support its insistence on a 50% threshold by invoking the policy of constitutional avoidance, which calls for construing a statute so as to avoid a possibly unconstitutional result. The plurality suggests that allowing a lower threshold would “require crossover districts throughout the Nation,” ante, at 21, thereby implicating the principle of Shaw v. Reno that districting with an excessive reliance on race is unconstitutional (“excessive” now being equated by the plurality with the frequency of creating opportunity districts). But the plurality has it precisely backwards. A State will inevitably draw some crossover districts as the natural byproduct of districting based on traditional factors. If these crossover districts count as minority-opportunity districts, the State will be much closer to meeting its §2 obligation without any reference to race, and fewer minority-opportunity districts will, therefore, need to be created purposefully. But if, as a matter of law, only majority-minority districts provide a minority seeking equality with the opportunity to eleet its preferred candidates, the State will have much further to go to create a sufficient number of minority-opportunity districts, will be required to bridge this gap by creating exclusively majority-minority districts, and will inevitably produce a districting plan that reflects a greater focus on race. The plurality, however, seems to believe that any reference to race in districting poses a constitutional concern, even a State’s decision to reduce racial blocs in favor of crossover districts. A judicial position with these consequences is not constitutional avoidance.
IV
More serious than the plurality opinion’s inconsistency with prior cases construing §2 is the perversity of the results it portends. Consider the effect of the plurality’s rule on North Carolina’s districting scheme. Black voters make up approximately 20% of North Carolina’s VAP
A State like North Carolina faced with the plurality’s opinion, whether it wants to comply with § 2 or simply to avoid litigation, will, therefore, have no reason to create crossover districts. Section 2 recognizes no need for such districts, from which it follows that they can neither be required nor be created to help the State meet its obligation of equal electoral opportunity under §2. And if a legislature were induced to draw a crossover district by the plurality’s encouragement to create them voluntarily, ante, at 24, it would open itself to attack by the plurality based on the pointed suggestion that a policy favoring crossover districts runs counter to Shaw. The plurality has thus boiled §2 down to one option: the best way to avoid suit under § 2, and the only way to comply with §2, is by drawing district lines in a way that packs minority voters into majority-minority districts, probably eradicating crossover districts in the process.
Perhaps the plurality recognizes this aberrant implication, for it eventually attempts to disavow it. It asserts that “§ 2 allows States to choose their own method of complying with the Voting Rights Act, and we have said that may include drawing crossover districts. . . . [But] §2 does not mandate creating or preserving crossover districts.” Ante, at 23. See also ante, at 24 (crossover districts “can be evidence ... of equal political opportunity ... ”). But this is judicial fiat, not legal reasoning; the plurality does not even attempt to explain how a crossover district can be a minority-opportunity district when assessing the compliance of a districting plan with §2, but cannot be one when sought as a remedy to a §2 violation. The plurality cannot have it both ways. If voluntarily drawing a crossover
In short, to the extent the plurality’s holding is taken to control future results, the plurality has eliminated the protection of § 2 for the districts that best vindicate the goals of the statute, and has done all it can to force the States to perpetuate racially concentrated districts, the quintessential manifestations of race consciousness in American politics.
I respectfully dissent.
Notes
We have previously illustrated this in stylized fashion:
“Assume a hypothetical jurisdiction of 1,000 voters divided into 10 districts of 100 each, where members of a minority group make up 40 percent of the voting population and voting is totally polarized along racial lines. With the right geographic dispersion to satisfy the compactness requirement, and with careful manipulation of district lines, the minority voters might be placed in control of as many as 7 of the 10 districts. Each such district could be drawn with at least 51 members of the minority group, and whether the remaining minority voters were added to the groupings of 51 for safety or scattered in the other three districts, minority voters would be able to elect candidates of their choice in all seven districts.” Johnson v. De Grandy,512 U. S. 997 , 1016 (1994).
Of course, this does not create an entitlement to proportionate minority representation. Nothing in the statute promises electoral success. Rather, § 2 simply provides that, subject to qualifications based on a totality of circumstances, minority voters are entitled to a practical chance to compete in a roughly proportionate number of districts. Id., at 1014, n. 11. “[Minority voters are not immune from the obligation to pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground.” Id., at 1020.
This case is an entirely inappropriate vehicle for speculation about a more exact definition of majority-bloc voting. See supra, at 34. The political science literature has developed statistical methods for assessing the extent of majority-bloc voting that are far more nuanced than the plurality’s 50% rule. See, e.g., Pildes 1534-1535 (describing a “falloff rate” that social scientists use to measure the comparative rate at which whites vote for black Democratic candidates compared to white Democratic candidates and noting that the falloff rate for congressional elections during the 1990s in North Carolina was 9%). But this issue was never briefed in this case and is not before us, the respondents having stipulated to the existence of majority-bloc voting, App. to Pet. for Cert. 130a, and there is no reason to attempt to accomplish in this case through the first Gingles factor what would actually be a quantification of the third.
Compare Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, 2000 Voting Age Population and Voting-Age Citizens (PHC-T-31) (Table 1-1), online at http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t31/index.html (as visited Mar. 5, 2009, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file) (total VAP in North Carolina is 6,087,996), with id,., Table 1-3 (black or African-American VAP is 1,216,622).
Under the same logic, North Carolina could fracture and submerge in majority-dominated districts the 12 districts in which black voters constitute between 35% and 49% of the voting population and routinely elect the candidates of their choice without ever implicating § 2, and could do so in districts not covered by § 5 without implicating the VRA at all. The untenable implications of the plurality’s rule do not end there. The plurality declares that its holding “does not apply to cases in which there is intentional discrimination against a racial minority.” Ante, at 20. But the logic of the plurality’s position compels the absurd conclusion that the invidious and intentional fracturing of crossover districts in order to harm minority voters would not state a claim under § 2. After all, if the elimination of a crossover district can never deprive minority voters in the district of the opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice,” minorities in an invidiously eliminated district simply cannot show an injury under §2.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
I join Justice Souter’s opinion in full. I write separately in light of the plurality’s claim that a bright-line 50% rule (used as a Thornburg v. Gingles,
Assume that a basic purpose of a gateway number is to separate (1) districts where a minority group can “elect representatives of their choice,” from (2) districts where the minority, because of the need to obtain majority crossover votes, can only “elect representatives” that are consensus candidates. 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.); League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry,
No voting group is 100% cohesive. Except in districts with overwhelming minority populations, some crossover votes are often necessary. The question is how likely it is that the need for crossover votes will force a minority to reject its “preferred
Why not use a numerical gateway rule that looks more directly at the relevant question: Is the minority bloc large enough, is it cohesive enough, is the necessary majority crossover vote small enough, so that the minority (tending to vote cohesively) can likely vote its preferred candidate (rather than a consensus candidate) into office? See ante, at 33 (Souter, J., dissenting) (“[Ejmpirical studies confir[m] that. . . minority groups” constituting less than 50% of the voting population “regularly elect their preferred candidates with the help of modest crossover by members of the majority”); see also Pildes, Is Voting-Rights Law Now at War With Itself? Social Science and Voting Rights in the 2000s, 80 N. C. L. Rev. 1517, 1529-1535 (2002) (reviewing studies showing small but reliable crossover voting by whites in districts where minority voters have demonstrated the ability to elect their preferred candidates without constituting 50% of the population in that district). We can likely find a reasonably administrable mathematical formula more directly tied to the factors in question.
To take a possible example: Suppose we pick a numerical ratio that requires the minority voting age population to be twice as large as the percentage of majority crossover votes needed to elect the minority’s preferred candidate. We would calculate the latter (the percentage of majority crossover votes the minority voters need) to take account of both the percentage of minority voting age population in the district and the cohesiveness with which they vote. Thus, if minority voters account for 45% of the voters in a district and 89% of those voters tend to vote cohesively as a group, then the minority needs a crossover vote of about 20% of the majority voters to elect its preferred candidate. (Such a district with 100 voters would have 45 minority voters and 55 majority voters; 40 minority voters would vote for the minority group’s preferred candidate at election time; the minority voters would need 11 more votes to elect their preferred candidate; and 11 is about 20% of the majority’s 55.) The larger the minority population, the greater its cohesiveness, and thus the smaller the crossover vote needed to assure success, the greater the likelihood that the minority can elect its preferred candidate and the smaller the likelihood that the cohesive minority, in order to find the needed majority crossover vote, must support a consensus, rather than its preferred, candidate.
In reflecting the reality that minority voters can elect the candidate of their choice when they constitute less than 50% of a district by relying on a small majority crossover vote, this approach is in no way contradictory to, or even in tension with, the third Gingles requirement. Since Gingles itself, we have acknowledged that the requirement of majority-bloc voting can be satisfied even when some small number of majority voters cross over to support a minority-preferred candidate. See
I do not claim that the 2-to-l ratio is a perfect rule; I claim only that it is better than the plurality’s 50% rule. After all, unlike 50%, a 2-to-l ratio (of voting age minority population to necessary nonminority crossover votes) focuses directly upon the problem at hand, better reflects voting realities, and consequently far better separates at the gateway likely sheep from likely goats. See Gingles, supra, at 45 (The §2 inquiry depends on a “ ‘functional’ view of the political process” and “‘a searching practical evaluation of the past and present reality’ ” (quoting S. Rep. No. 97-417, p. 30, and n. 120 (1982))); Gingles, supra, at 94-95 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (“[Tjhere is no indication that Congress intended to mandate a single, universally applicable standard for measuring undiluted minority voting strength, regardless of local conditions ... ”). In most cases, the 50% rule and the 2-to-l rule would have roughly similar effects. Most districts where the minority voting age population is greater than 50% will almost always satisfy the 2-to-l rule; and most districts where the minority population is below 40% will almost never satisfy the 2-to-l rule. But in districts with minority voting age populations that range from 40% to 50%, the divergent approaches of the two standards can make a critical difference — as well they should.
In a word, Justice Soutek well explains why the majority’s test is ill suited to the statute’s objectives. I add that the test the majority adopts is ill suited to its own administrative ends. Better gateway tests, if needed, can be found.
With respect, I dissent.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
I join Justice Souter’s powerfully persuasive dissenting opinion, and would make concrete what is implicit in his exposition. The plurality’s interpretation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is difficult to fathom and severely undermines the statute’s estimable aim. Today’s decision returns the ball to Congress’ court. The Legislature has just cause to clarify beyond debate the appropriate reading of § 2.