Louisiana v. Callais

P R E L I M I N A R Y P R I N T
Volume 608 U. S. Part 1
Pages 85–173
OFFICIAL REPORTS
OF
T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T
April 29, 2026
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
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85
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LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS et al.
appeal
from the united states district court for the
western district of louisiana
No. 24–109. Argued March 24, 2025—Reargued October 15, 2025—De-
cided April 29, 2026*
These cases concern whether Louisiana's new congressional map is an un-
constitutional racial gerrymander. In 2022, after the State redrew its
congressional districts, a federal judge in Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F.
Supp. 3d 759 (MD La.), held that the 2022 map likely violated § 2 of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U. S. C. § 10301 et seq., because it did not
include an additional majority-black district. But when the State drew
a new map, SB8, that contained such a district, the new map was chal-
lenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in Callais v.
Landry, 732 F. Supp. 3d 574 (WD La.), held that SB8 violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the State ap-
pealed to this Court.
The parties originally briefed and argued this suit last Term, and
their arguments at that time highlighted problems in the existing body
of § 2 case law. One problem resulted from the rule that in racial gerry-
mandering cases, unlike other cases involving claims of racial discrimi-
nation, strict scrutiny is triggered only if race “predominated” in the
State's decisionmaking process. Another problem stemmed from the
long-unresolved question whether compliance with the Voting Rights
Act provides a compelling reason that may justify the intentional use of
race in drawing legislative districts. For over 30 years, the Court has
simply assumed for the sake of argument that the answer is yes. These
and other problems convinced the Court that the time had come to re-
solve whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act can indeed pro-
vide a compelling reason for race-based districting.
Held: Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create
an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justifed
the State's use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitu-
tional racial gerrymander. Pp. 107–126.
(a) The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on
the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny. The
Court's precedents have identifed “only two compelling interests” that
*Together with No. 24–110, Robinson et al. v. Callais et al., on appeal
from the same court.

86 LOUISIAN
A v. CALLAIS
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can satisfy strict scrutiny: “avoiding imminent and serious risks to
human
safety in prisons,” and “remediating specifc, identifed instances
of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.” Stu-
dents for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard
College, 600 U. S. 181. The question presented is whether compliance
with § 2 of the Voting Rights Act should be added to this very short
list of compelling interests. The Court now holds that compliance
with § 2, as properly construed, can provide such an interest. A proper
interpretation of § 2 requires examining the statutory text to under-
stand what it demands with respect to drawing legislative districts.
Pp. 107–116.
(1) Under Section 2(a), the Court takes as a given that a legislative
districting map may constitute a “standard, practice, or procedure” that
may violate § 2 if it “results in a denial or abridgement” of the right to
vote “on account of race or color.” Section 2(b) establishes that a viola-
tion occurs when political processes are “not equally open to participa-
tion by” members of a racial group “in that [they] have less opportunity
than other members of the electorate to . . . elect representatives of
their choice.” The key concept is “less opportunity than other members
of the electorate,” which sets a baseline against which to assess the
opportunity of minority voters. That baseline—the opportunity that
any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of choice—de-
pends on the voting preferences of other voters in the district. For
example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic candidates,
a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance of securing
the election of his or her preferred candidate. The roster of voters who
end up in a given district depends, in turn, on the districting criteria
the State uses to draw a legislative map. Thus, the “opportunity” of
these “members of the electorate” to contribute their votes to a winning
cause is whatever opportunity results from the application of the State's
combination of permissible districting criteria. That is what a ran-
domly selected individual voter and group of voters can expect regard-
ing their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Under § 2, a
minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more. Pp. 109–112.
(2) This interpretation is the best reading of the statutory text and
ensures that § 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not exceed Congress's
authority under § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, which confers on Con-
gress the “power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legisla-
tion.” As the Court has long held, the Fifteenth Amendment bars only
state action “ `motivated by discriminatory purpose.' ” Reno v. Bossier
Parrish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 481. So a law that seeks to enforce
the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting mere disparate impact would
fail to enforce a right that the Amendment secures. That is never “ap-
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propriate,” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 308, because
Congress
cannot “enforce a constitutional right by changing what the
right is,” City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 519. For this reason,
the focus of § 2 must be enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment's pro-
hibition on intentional racial discrimination. When § 2 of the Act is
properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when circumstances give
rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.
Properly understood, § 2 thus does not intrude on States' prerogative to
draw districts based on nonracial factors, including to achieve partisan
advantage. In short, § 2 imposes liability only when the evidence sup-
ports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts
to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race. Not
only does this interpretation follow from the plain text of § 2, but it is
consistent with the limited authority that the Fifteenth Amendment
confers. Pp. 112–116.
(b) This interpretation does not require abandonment of the frame-
work for evaluating § 2 claims that the Court established in Thornburg
v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30. The Court need only update the framework so
it aligns with the statutory text and refects important developments
since the Court decided Gingles 40 years ago. Four historical develop-
ments are of particular note. First, vast social change has occurred
throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made
great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination. Second, a full-
blown two-party system has emerged in the States where § 2 suits are
most common, and there is frequently a correlation between race and
party preference. Third, in Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684,
this Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in
federal court, and this holding creates an incentive for litigants to exploit
§ 2 for partisan purposes by “repackag[ing] a partisan-gerrymandering
claim as a racial-gerrymandering claim,” Alexander v. South Carolina
State Con ference of NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 21. Fourth, the increased use
and capabilities of computers in drawing districts and creating illustra-
tive maps means that a § 2 plaintiff can easily identify an alternative
map that fully achieves all the State's legitimate goals while producing
greater racial balance, if such a map is possible. In light of these devel-
opments, the Court updates the Gingles framework and realigns it with
the text of § 2 and constitutional principles. Pp. 116–121.
(1) The frst Gingles precondition is that a community of minority
voters must be suffciently numerous and compact to constitute a major-
ity in a reasonably confgured district. While many § 2 plaintiffs have
simply provided illustrative maps with their desired number of
majority-minority districts, such maps prove only that the State could
create an additional majority-minority district, not that the State's fail-

88 LOUISIAN
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ure to do so violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. To show the latter,
plai
ntiffs' illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions: Plaintiffs cannot
use race as a districting criterion in drawing illustrative maps, and illus-
trative maps must meet all the State's legitimate districting objectives,
including traditional districting criteria and the State's specifed political
goals. Pp. 118–119.
(2) To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically cohe-
sive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the majority—the
plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affliation,
showing that voters engage in racial-bloc voting that cannot be ex-
plained by partisan affliation. Pp. 119–120.
(3) On the “totality of circumstances” inquiry, the focus must be on
evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what the Fifteenth
Amendment prohibits: present-day intentional racial discrimination re-
garding voting. Discrimination that occurred some time ago and
present-day disparities characterized as ongoing “effects of societal dis-
crimination” are entitled to much less weight. Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S.
899, 909–910. Pp. 120–121.
(c) Nothing in Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, dictates a different re-
sult. That case merely addressed whether Alabama's novel evidentiary
standard required a change to existing § 2 precedent. Allen did not
address whether “race-based redistricting ” under § 2 could “extend in-
defnitely into the future” despite signifcant changes in conditions, 599
U. S., at 45 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part), nor did it address
whether § 2 plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics in proving
their case. Indeed, Allen did not address the Fourteenth Amendment
at all. But here, the decision before the Court is based on the Four-
teenth Amendment. Pp. 121–122.
(d) Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this suit easily
require affrmance. Louisiana's enactment of SB8 triggered strict scru-
tiny because the State's underlying goal was racial. The State confg-
ured District 6 to achieve a black voting-age population over 50% be-
cause the Robinson court held that § 2 likely required the creation of an
additional majority-black district. The State's intentional compliance
with the court's demands constituted an “express acknowledgment that
race played a role in the drawing of district lines.” Alexander, 602
U. S., at 8.
No compelling interest justifes SB8 because § 2 did not require the
State to create a new majority-minority district. At every step of the
Gingles framework, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their § 2 case.
On the frst Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs did not meet
their burden because they did not provide an illustrative map that
met all the State's nonracial goals, including the State's political goals.
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On the second and third Gingles preconditions, the Robinson plaintiffs
offered
evidence that black and white voters consistently supported dif-
ferent candidates, but their analysis did not control for partisan prefer-
ences. And on the totality of circumstances, the Robinson plaintiffs
failed to show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination, in-
stead relying on historical evidence and evidence that failed to disentan-
gle race from politics. Pp. 122–125.
732 F. Supp. 3d 574, affrmed and remanded.
Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J.,
and Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barret t, JJ., joi ned.
Thomas, J., fled a concurring opinion, in which Gorsuch, J., joined, post,
p. 126. Kagan, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and
Jackson, JJ., joined, post, p. 127.
Janai Nelson reargued the cause for appellants Press
Robinson et al in No. 24–110. With her on the briefs for
reargument were Samuel Spital, Victoria Wenger, John S.
Cusick, Colin Burke, Deuel Ross, I. Sara Rohani, Sarah
Brannon, Megan C. Keenan, Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux, So-
phia Lin Lakin, Cecillia D. Wang, Nora Ahmed, T. Alora
Thomas-Lundborg, Daniel Hessel, John Adcock, Robert A.
Atkins, Jonathan H. Hurwitz, Pietro J. Signoracci, Amitav
Chakraborty, Adam P. Savitt, and Robert Klein. Stuart
Naifeh argued the cause for appellants in No. 24–110 on the
original argument. With him on the briefs on the original
argument were the above-named counsel.
J. Benjamin Aguiñaga, Solicitor General of Louisiana, ar-
gued and reargued the cause for appellant Louisiana in No.
24–109. With him on the briefs were Elizabeth B. Murrill,
Attorney General of Louisiana, Zachary Faircloth, Principal
Deputy Solicitor General, Morgan Brungard, Deputy Solici-
tor General, Caitlan A. Huettemann. With him on the
briefs on the original argument were the above-named coun-
sel and Elizabeth Brown, Assistant Solicitor General.
Edward D. Greim argued and reargued the cause for ap-
pellees in both cases. With him on the briefs was Paul Loy
Hurd. Phillip John Strach and Alyssa M. Riggins fled a
brief for appellee Landry in No. 24–109.
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Principal Deputy Solicitor General Mooppan argued the
cause
for the United States as amicus curiae urging affrm-
ance. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Sauer,
Assistant Attorney General Dhillon, Principal Deputy As-
sistant Attorney General Osete, Aaron Z. Roper, Andrew G.
Braniff, and David N. Goldman. Solicitor General Prelo-
gar, Assistant Attorney General Clarke, Deputy Solicitor
General Fletcher, Caroline Flynn, Tovah R. Calderon, and
Noah B. Bokat-Lindell fled a brief for the United States as
amicus curiae urging vacatur and remand on the original
argument.†
†Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled in both cases for the
District of Columbia et al. by Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General of the
District of Columbia, Caroline S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, Ashwin
P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, by Letitia James, Attorney
General of New York, Barbara D. Underwood, Solicitor General, Judith N.
Vale, Deputy Solicitor General, and Andrea W. Trento, Assistant Solicitor
General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as fol-
lows: Kris Mayes of Arizona, Rob Bonta of California, Philip J. Weiser of
Colorado, William Tong of Connecticut, Kathleen Jennings of Delaware,
Anne E. Lopez of Hawaii, Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Aaron M. Frey of
Maine, Anthony G. Brown of Maryland, Andrea Joy Campbell of Massa-
chusetts, Dana Nessel of Michigan, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Aaron D.
Ford of Nevada, Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey, Raúl Torrez of New
Mexico, Jeff Jackson of North Carolina, Dan Rayfeld of Oregon, Peter F.
Neronha of Rhode Island, Charity R. Clark of Vermont, Nicholas W.
Brown of Washington, and Joshua L. Kaul of Wisconsin; for the Black
Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Inc., et al. by Amanda Giglio
and Michael B. de Leeuw; for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York
University School of Law by Kareem U. Crayton, Maura Eileen O'Con-
nor, and Michael C. Li; for the Campaign Legal Center by Annabelle
E. Harless, Mark P. Gaber, Aseem Mulji, and Simone Leeper; for the
Constitutional Accountability Center by Elizabeth B. Wydra, Brianne J.
Gorod, and David H. Gans; for Former Republican Members of Congress
by Amit Agarwal, Beau Tremitiere, and Lauren Groth; for the Louisiana
Black Caucus by Jonathan Miller and Stephen M. Irving; for Louisiana
Historians by Hilary Harris Klein, Jeffrey Loperfdo, and Mitchell
Brown; for Milligan Plaintiffs by Jessica L. Ellsworth and Jo-Ann Tamila
Sagar; for the Southern Poverty Law Center by Avner Shapiro, Keith
Harrison, Preetha Chakrabarti, and Douglas M. Crockatt; for Rep. Troy

Cite
as: 608 U. S. 85 (2026)
91
Opinion of the Court
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.
Sec
tion 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U. S. C.
§ 10301 et seq., was designed to enforce the Constitution—not
Carter et al. by LaRue L. Robinson; for Travis Crum by Rakesh N. Ki-
laru, Daniel Epps, and Travis Crum, pro se; for Edward Galmon, Sr.,
et al. by Abha Khanna, Lalitha D. Madduri, and Jacob D. Shelly; and for
Ellen D. Katz et al. by Joshua Matz and Trisha Anderson. James F.
Blumstein, pro se, fled a brief as amicus curiae urging vacatur and re-
mand in both cases.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance in both cases were fled for the
State of Alabama et al. by Steve Marshall, Attorney General of Alabama,
Edmund G. LaCour, Jr., Solicitor General, Robert M. Overing, Deputy
Solicitor General, and Dylan Mauldin and George Muirhead, Assistant
Solicitors General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective
States as follows: Stephen J. Cox of Alaska, James Uthmeier of Florida,
Christopher M. Carr of Georgia, Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, Theodore E.
Rokita of Indiana, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Kris W. Kobach of Kansas, Lynn
Fitch of Mississippi, Austin Knudsen of Montana, Michael T. Hilgers of
Nebraska, Drew Wrigley of North Dakota, Gentner Drummond of Okla-
homa, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee,
and John B. McCuskey of West Virginia; for the State of Missouri by
Catherine L. Hanaway, Attorney General of Missouri, and Louis J. Ca-
pozzi III, Solicitor General; for the Town of Newburgh by Misha Tseytlin
and Kevin M. LeRoy; for the America First Legal Foundation by Jona-
than F. Mitchell, Adam K. Mortara, and Gene P. Hamilton; for the Center
for Election Confdence by Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duver-
nay; for Judicial Watch, Inc., et al. by T. Russell Nobile; for the Landmark
Legal Foundation by Matthew C. Forys, Michael J. O'Neill, and Richard
P. Hutchison; for the Pacifc Legal Foundation by Christopher M. Kieser
and Joshua P. Thompson; for the Project on Fair Representation by
Christopher E. Mills; and for the Public Interest Legal Foundation et al.
by J. Christian Adams.
Briefs of amici curiae were fled in both cases for Independent State
Redistricting Commissioners by John A. Freedman, Nancy L. Perkins,
and Justin Levitt; for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law et al. by Damon T. Hewitt and Robert Weiner; for the Lincoln Club
of Orange County et al. by Mark P. Meuser, Michael Columbo, and Karin
M. Sweigart; for Louisiana Mathematics Professors et al. by Sam Hirsch,
Jessica Ring Amunson, Arjun R. Ramamurti, Judy Y. Barrasso, and Mi-
thun B. Kamath; for the National Conference of Black Lawyers et al. by
Jeanne Mirer and Jenipher R. Jones; for the Navajo Nation by Patricia
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92 LOUISIAN
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Opinion of the Court
collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes
appl
ied this Court's § 2 precedents in a way that forces
States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that
the Constitution forbids.
This tension between § 2 and the Constitution came to a
head when Louisiana redrew its congressional districts after
the 2020 census. In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle Dis-
trict of Louisiana held that the map adopted by the state
legislature likely violated § 2 because it did not include an
additional majority-black district. But when the State drew
a new map that contained such a district, its new map was
challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in
the Western District of Louisiana held that the new map
violated the Equal Protection Clause, and the State appealed
to this Court.
The parties originally briefed and argued this suit last
Term, and their arguments at that time highlighted prob-
lems in the existing body of § 2 case law. One problem re-
sulted from the rule that in racial gerrymandering cases, un-
like other cases involving claims of racial discrimination, see,
e. g., Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Develop-
ment Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 265–266 (1977), strict scrutiny is
triggered only if race “predominated” in the State's decision-
making process. In this suit, Louisiana adopted the chal-
lenged map and created the second majority-black district
because it quite reasonably anticipated that, if it did not do
so, the Middle District of Louisiana would order the use of a
map with a differently confgured second majority-black dis-
trict that would effectively oust an incumbent whom the leg-
islature sought to protect. Under our existing case law, that
Ferguson-Bohnee and Sage G. Metoxen; for W. Kerrel Murray by Kyle
Edwards Haugh and Joshua A. Geltzer; for Former Republican Gov. Ar-
nold Schwarzenegger et al. by Alexander F. Atkins, Maithreyi Rata-
konda, Christine P. Sun, and Kathleen Hartnett; and for Nicholas O. Ste-
phanopoulos by Joshua Karsh.
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93
Opinion of the Court
situation posed the question whether race or politics was the
St
ate's “predominant” motivation.
Another problem stemmed from the long-unresolved ques-
tion whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act pro-
vides a compelling reason that may justify the intentional
use of race in drawing legislative districts. For over 30
years, we have assumed for the sake of argument that the
answer is yes. See infra, at 99–101. And we have gone fur-
ther and assumed that it is enough if a State “ `ha[s] a strong
basis in evidence' ” for thinking that the Voting Rights Act
requires race-based conduct. Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S.
285, 292–293 (2017). But allowing race to play any part in
government decisionmaking represents a departure from the
constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.
These and other problems convinced us that the time had
come to resolve whether compliance with the Voting Rights
Act can indeed provide a compelling reason for race-based
districting. We now answer that question: Compliance with
§ 2, as properly construed, can provide such a reason. Cor-
rectly understood, § 2 does not impose liability at odds with
the Constitution, and it should not have imposed liability on
Louisiana for its 2022 map. Compliance with § 2 thus could
not justify the State's use of race-based redistricting here.
The State's attempt to satisfy the Middle District's ruling,
although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial ger-
rymander, and we therefore affrm the decision below.
I
A
Ratifed in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment provides that
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.”
For many years afterward, however, States “heavily sup-
pressed” the right of black citizens to vote. Brnovich v.
Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. 647, 655 (2021).
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“States employed a variety of notorious methods, including
pol
l taxes, literacy tests, property qualifcations, white pri-
maries, and grandfather clauses,” in a “blatant” effort to sup-
press black voting. Id., at 655–656, and n. 1 (citing H. R.
Rep. No. 439, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 8, 11–13 (1965); S. Rep.
No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 4–5 (1965); brackets
and internal quotation marks omitted). Even “as late as the
mid-1960s, black registration and voting rates in some States
were appallingly low.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 656; see
South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309–315 (1966).
In addition, States employed legislative districting schemes
to prevent the election of black candidates and candidates
that black voters preferred. See Alexander v. South Caro-
lina State Conference of NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 35 (2024); Go-
million v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 341 (1960).
Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes Con-
gress to enac t “appropr iate leg islati on” to enforce the
Amendment's protections, and in 1965 Congress invoked that
power to enact the Voting Rights Act. Brnovich, 594 U. S.,
at 655. “The Act and its amendments in the 1970s specif-
cally forbade some of the practices that had been used to
suppress black voting,” including literacy tests and poll
taxes. Id., at 656; see 52 U. S. C. § 10301; §§ 4(a), (c), 79 Stat.
438–439; § 6, 84 Stat. 315; § 102, 89 Stat. 400, as amended, 52
U. S. C. §§ 10303(a), (c), 10501 (prohibiting the denial of the
right to vote in any election for failure to pass a test demon-
strating literacy, educational achievement or knowledge of
any particular subject, or good moral character); see also
§ 10, 79 Stat. 442, as amended, 52 U. S. C. § 10306 (declaring
poll taxes unlawful); § 11, 79 Stat. 443, as amended, 52
U. S. C. § 10307 (prohibiting intimidation and the refusal to
allow or count votes). We upheld many of these provisions
in Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 316, 327–337.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in its original form
“closely tracked the language of the Amendment it was
adopted to enforce.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 656. At that
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time, § 2 stated simply that “[n]o voting qualifcation or pre-
requisite
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.” 79 Stat. 437.
In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55 (1980), the Court inter-
preted this language, and four Justices concluded in a plural-
ity opinion that “facially neutral voting practices violate § 2
only if motivated by a discriminatory purpose.” Brnovich,
594 U. S., at 658. Justice Stevens, who concurred in the
judgment, proposed a different but similarly demanding
standard. See Bolden, 446 U. S., at 90–94. Indeed, in his
view, a districting practice, even if motivated in part by race,
would not violate § 2 so long as it was “supported by valid
and articulable justifcations.” Id., at 91–92.
Bolden roused “ `an avalanche of criticism, both in the
media and within the civil rights community.' ” Allen v.
Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, 11 (2023) (quoting T. Boyd & S. Mark-
man, The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: A
Legislative History, 40 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1347, 1355
(1983)). Critics argued that a focus on discriminatory in-
tent, rather than discriminatory effects, would defeat worthy
claims because of the diffculty of proving intentional dis-
crimination. See 599 U. S., at 11.
Members of Congress evidently shared these concerns.
In 1982, shortly after Bolden, Congress sought to abrogate
that decision by amending § 2. A House bill was “originally
passed . . . under a loose understanding that § 2 would pro-
hibit all discriminatory `effects' of voting practices, and that
intent would be `irrelevant,' ” but “[t]his version met stiff
resistance in the Senate.” Mississippi Republican Execu-
tive Comm. v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002, 1010 (1984) (Rehnquist,
J., dissenting) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 97–227, p. 29 (1981)).
Critics worried that an effects test would lead to “manda-
t[ory] racial proportionality in elections,” a scenario “re-
garded by many as intolerable.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 12.
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The House and Senate eventually compromised, and the fnal
produc
t included both an effects test in § 2(a) and a “robust
disclaimer against proportionality” in § 2(b). Id., at 13.
This latter provision also specifes what a plaintiff must
establish to prove a § 2 violation. The provision requires
consideration of the “totality of circumstances” in each case
and demands proof 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 pro-
tected class “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.” 52
U. S. C. § 10301(b) (emphasis added). Congress took this lan-
guage almost verbatim from Justice White's opinion for the
Court in White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973), which in-
volved a “vote dilution” claim, i. e., a claim that a districting
scheme impermissibly lessens the weight of the votes of mi-
nority voters.
In White, the Court affrmed a judgment that Texas had
used two multimember electoral districts “invidiously to can-
cel out or minimize the voting strength of racial groups.”
Id., at 765. According to White, a vote-dilution plaintiff had
to show that “the political processes leading to nomination
and election were not equally open to participation by the
group in question—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 decision in White did not say anything one way or
another about proof of discriminatory purpose or intent, but
the Court's rationale rested on evidence that gave rise to an
obvious inference that the State had set out to prevent the
election of candidates preferred by minority voters. The
Texas districting scheme generally used single-member dis-
tricts but employed multimember districts in two parts of
the State where single-member districts might have resulted
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in the election of minority candidates. The Court observed
that
the use of multimember districts is not “necessarily” or
“per se” unconstitutional, but it recognized that such dis-
tricts can be employed to achieve discriminatory ends. Id.,
at 765; see also Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 389 (1971)
(observing that a switch to at-large elections could be a
“metho[d] to maintain white control of the political process”);
Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 569 (1969) (ex-
plaining that a change to at-large voting could nullify the
ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice).
The Court also cited strong evidence that the legislature had
done so in the case at hand. Writing at a time when the
Democratic Party was dominant in much of Texas, the Court
noted that a “white-dominated organization,” which had “ef-
fective control” over candidate slating within that party, had
engaged in “ `racial campaign tactics in white precincts to
defeat candidates who had the overwhelming support of the
black community,' ” thereby “ `effectively exclud[ing]' ” the
black community “ `from participation in the Democratic pri-
mary selection process.' ” White, 412 U. S., at 766–767.
The Court likewise cited evidence that the legislature had
“invidiously excluded Mexican-Americans from effective par-
ticipation in political life, specifcally in the election of repre-
sentatives to the Texas House of Representatives.” Id., at
769. Thus, White presented a situation in which circum-
stantial evidence suggested very strongly that the State had
created multimember districts for the purpose of diluting mi-
nority votes.
A few years later, when Congress looked for language that
would abrogate Mobile v. Bolden's interpretation of § 2,
it selected terms that were nearly identical to language used
in White. The accompanying Report of the Senate Judiciary
Committee explained that the amendment's purpose was
to repudiate Bolden and establish a new votedilution test
based on White. See S. Rep. No. 97–417, pp. 2, 15–16, 27
(1982).
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B
Th
is Court frst construed the amended version of § 2 in
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Gingles con-
cerned a challenge to North Carolina's multimember district-
ing scheme on the ground that it diluted the vote of black
citizens. Id., at 34–36. Gingles was decided at a time when
this Court often paid insuffcient attention to the language
of statutory provisions, and Justice Brennan's opinion for the
Court followed this pattern. Instead of analyzing what the
statute said, the opinion simply “quoted the text of amended
§ 2 and then jumped right to the Senate Judiciary Committee
Report.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 667; see Gingles, 478 U. S.,
at 42–46. Relying heavily on that Report, the opinion set
out three threshold requirements for proving a § 2 vote-
dilution claim, plus a nonexhaustive list of factors to be con-
sidered in making a fnal decision as to whether the State
had violated § 2. See id., at 44–45, 48–51, 80.
To succeed in proving a § 2 violation, Gingles taught, a
plaintiff must make four showings. First, the plaintiff must
show that the minority group in question is “suffciently
large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority
in a reasonably confgured district.” Wisconsin Legislature
v. Wisconsin Elections Comm'n, 595 U. S. 398, 402 (2022)
(per curiam) (citing Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50–51). A district
is reasonably confgured, we later explained, “if it comports
with traditional districting criteria, such as being contiguous
and reasonably compact.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 18. “Second,
the minority group must be able to show that it is politically
cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. Third, “the minority
must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes
suffciently as a bloc to enable it . . . to defeat the minority's
preferred candidate.” Ibid. “Finally, a plaintiff who dem-
onstrates the three preconditions must also show, based on
the `totality of circumstances,' that the political process is
not `equally open' to minority voters.” Allen, 599 U. S., at
18 (quoting Gingles, 478 U. S., at 45–46).
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C
In
later cases, redistricting plans that States created to
comply with the Voting Rights Act were themselves chal-
lenged as racial gerrymanders. This Court approached such
cases by building on the framework from other racial-
discrimination cases under the Equal Protection Clause.
In those cases, if race played a role in a decision made
by a government actor, strict scrutiny applied. See Arling-
ton Heights, 429 U. S., at 265–266. Under this standard,
the government needed to assert a compelling interest that
justifed its use of race; and if the analysis progressed beyond
this point, the government had to show that its use of
race was narrowly tailored to vindicate that interest. See,
e. g., Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President
and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U. S. 181, 206 (2023)
(SFFA).
The Court modifed this framework for racial gerryman-
dering cases. Although any use of race in government deci-
sionmaking generally triggers strict scrutiny, in gerry-
mandering cases a challenger must show that race was
the government's predominant consideration. See Bush
v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 964 (1996) (plurality opinion). And
in cases where race predominated, States would sometimes
assert that compliance with the Voting Rights Act provided
a compelling interest justifying the use of race. Yet we
never decided whether compliance with the Act could con-
stitute a compelling interest. Instead, we repeatedly as-
sumed without deciding that the Voting Rights Act could
constitute a compelling interest because in all those cases,
the Ac t ac tua l ly did not demand the St ate's race-
predominant districting. Thus, the States in those cases
could not satisfy strict scrutiny regardless of whether com-
pliance with the Voting Rights Act could provide a compel-
ling interest.
The frst case in which the Court explicitly made this as-
sumption was Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 917–920
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(1995),
1
wh
ich concerned a majority-black district that was
designed to satisfy the Justice Department's preclearance de-
mands under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Miller
Court frst found that the legislature had “subordinated tra-
ditional race-neutral districting principles, including but not
limited to compactness, contiguity, and respect for political
subdivisions or communities defned by actual shared inter-
ests, to racial considerations.” Id., at 916. For this reason,
the Court held, race had predominated in the creation of the
new district, and the State had to “demonstrate that its dis-
tricting legislation [wa]s narrowly tailored to achieve a com-
pelling interest.” Id., at 920. The Court declined to address
“[w]hether or not in some cases compliance with the [Voting
Rights Act], standing alone, c[ould] provide a compelling in-
terest independent of any interest in remedying past dis-
crimination.” Id., at 921. Instead, the Court explained
that the “challenged district was not reasonably necessary
under a constitutional reading and application” of the Voting
Rights Act, so the State's goal of complying with the Act
could not supply a compelling interest. Ibid.
We repeated much the same analysis in Shaw v. Hunt, 517
U. S. 899, 908 (1996) (Shaw II ), applying strict scrutiny to a
redistricting plan that a State crafted to comply with both
§ 2 and § 5 of the Voting Rights Act. “[O]nce again,” we did
not reach the question “expressly left open” in Miller:
whether the Voting Rights Act could itself provide a compel-
ling interest to justify race-predominant districting. 517
U. S., at 911. After “assum[ing], arguendo, for the purpose
of resolving this suit, that compliance with § 2 could be a
compelling interest,” we held that the plan failed strict scru-
tiny because it was not reasonably required under a constitu-
tional reading and application of the Voting Rights Act. Id.,
at 915.
1
Such an assumption may have been implicit in Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S.
630, 653–656 (1993) (Shaw I).
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Likewise, in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Ala-
bam
a, 575 U. S. 254, 259 (2015), we applied strict scrutiny to
a race-predominant districting plan that the State had cre-
ated for two purposes: frst, to “come close to a one-person,
one-vote ideal,” and second, to “ensure compliance” with § 5
of the Voting Rights Act. We held that, even if the Voting
Rights Act could provide a compelling interest, the map did
not satisfy strict scrutiny because it was not required by the
Act. Id., at 277. Once again, we left open whether com-
pliance with the Act “remain[ed] a compelling interest.”
Id., at 279.
In Cooper, 581 U. S., at 301, we continued our “long ”-
standing assumption that “complying with the VRA is a com-
pelling interest.” Again, we did not need to resolve this
question because a constitutional reading and application of
the Act did not require the district at issue. Id., at 306.
And again, in Wisconsin Legislature, we once more “as-
sumed that complying with the [Voting Rights Act] is a com-
pelling interest.” 595 U. S., at 401. But because the Wis-
consin Supreme Court had not properly analyzed whether
the Act required the map at issue, we remanded for the court
to “undertake a full strict-scrutiny analysis.” Id., at 406.
This was the legal framework in place when the lawsuits
involving Louisiana's congressional districts were fled and
litigated in the lower courts.
II
As noted earlier, the underlying litigation in this suit re-
sulted from Louisiana's response to the population changes
disclosed by the 2020 census. The subsequent reapportion-
ment of House seats among the States left Louisiana with
the same number of seats—six—that it had previously been
allocated, but due to shifts in population, the State needed
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102 LOUISIAN
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Figure 1. Louisiana's Map from 2013–2022
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In 2022, Louisiana enacted a new map, “HB1,” that closely
resembled its immediate predecessor:
Figure 2. HB1, Enacted in 2022

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103
Opinion of the Court
HB1, like its predecessor, included only one district in
wh
ich black voters were a majority of the voting-age popula-
tion. (In the above maps, it is the bat-shaped District 2 that
includes much of New Orleans, blue in Figure 1 and yellow
in Figure 2.) As soon as HB1 was enacted, lawsuits were
fled in the Middle District of Louisiana asserting that the
map violated the Voting Rights Act by “ `packing ' large num-
bers of Black voters into a single majority-Black congres-
sional district . . . and `cracking ' the remaining Black voters
among the other fve districts.” Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F.
Supp. 3d 759, 768 (2022). After the suit was fled, the Rob-
inson court issued a lengthy opinion concluding that HB1
likely violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to include
a second majority-black district. The court thus entered a
preliminary injunction requiring Louisiana to implement a
new map before the 2022 election, which was less than six
months away. Id., at 856.
Louisiana objected to the decision and promptly appealed.
But because of circumstances outside the State's control, its
appeal ended up in limbo. This Court granted certiorari be-
fore judgment and held the case pending a decision in Allen.
Nearly a year later, after deciding Allen, the Court dis-
missed the petition as improvidently granted and remanded
the case to the Fifth Circuit to consider Louisiana's appeal
in the ordinary course. By that time, the 2022 election had
passed, and the urgency that had justifed the preliminary
injunction was no longer present. In a tentatively worded
opinion, the Fifth Circuit held that the Robinson District
Court's decision “was valid when it was issued” but that the
preliminary injunction was no longer needed. Robinson v.
Ardoin, 86 F. 4th 574, 599–600 (2023).
In the absence of urgency, the Fifth Circuit remanded the
case to the District Court with instructions to give Louisiana
time to draw a new map. If Louisiana failed to do so, the
Fifth Circuit suggested, the District Court could proceed
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with a trial on the merits and, if needed, remedial proceed-
i
ngs. Id., at 601–602.
After the Fifth Circuit's remand, Louisiana did not have
many options. In the Robinson decision, the District Court
held that the plaintiffs were “likely to prevail” on their claim
that the Voting Rights Act demanded the creation of a sec-
ond majority-black district. 605 F. Supp. 3d, at 851. So if
Louisiana refused to adopt such a map, the District Court
would likely draw one and mandate its use. Wishing to
avoid that outcome, Louisiana decided to draw its own map.
After a deliberative process, Louisiana enacted the map at
issue in this suit: SB8.
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Figure 3. SB8
SB8 retains the original majority-minority district from
HB1 (above in yellow). It then adds an additional majority-
minority district, District 6 (above in green). To attain a
majority-black voting-age population, District 6 connects
black populations from Baton Rouge and Lafayette (in the

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southcentral region of the State) with the black population in
Shre
veport (in the far northwest of the State). SB8 differed
from the illustrative maps—shown below—on which the Dis-
trict Court relied in Robinson:
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These illustrative maps also include a second majority-
mi
nority district, but one with very different boundaries
(shown in blue in the top four maps and in green in the bot-
tom two maps). This district connects largely urban black
communities in Baton Rouge and Lafayette with more rural
black communities in the northeast corner of the State. By
contrast, SB8's District 6 connects the Baton Rouge and La-
fayette black populations with the distant black population
in Shreveport, in the northwest. Louisiana adopted this
scheme, rather than the one used in the Robinson illustra-
tive maps, because it protects the Republican incumbents the
State considered most important: Speaker of the House Mike
Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Appro-
priations Committee member Julia Letlow. See Brief for
Appellant in No. 24–109, pp. 13–14, 17.
Not long after SB8 was enacted, another lawsuit was fled,
this time in the Western District of Louisiana. A group of
plaintiffs (the Callais plaintiffs) asserted that SB8, and spe-
cifcally District 6, was a racial gerrymander that violated
the Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs from Robinson
intervened in the litigation, seeking to defend Louisiana's de-
cision to draw a second majority-minority district. Because
the Callais plaintiffs challenged “the constitutionality of the
apportionment of congressional districts,” a District Court
of three judges was convened to hear the suit. 28 U. S. C.
§ 2284(a). The court held a 3-day preliminary injunction
hearing, which was consolidated with a trial on the merits.
Observing that SB8's “second majority-minority district
. . . stretches some 250 miles from Shreveport in the north-
west corner of the state to Baton Rouge in southeast Louisi-
ana, slicing through metropolitan areas to scoop up pockets
of predominantly Black populations from Shreveport, Alex-
andria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge,” the court concluded
that the map effected a racial gerrymander that “violates the
Equal Protection Clause.” Callais v. Landry, 732 F. Supp.
3d 574, 582, 588 (WD La. 2024). Judge Stewart of the Fifth
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Circuit dissented. See id., at 614. The State of Louisiana
and
the Robinson intervenors appealed the decision directly
to this Court, and the Court noted probable jurisdiction.
604 U. S. 1007 (2024). See 28 U. S. C. § 1253.
After an initial round of briefng and argument last Term,
the Court restored these cases to the calendar for reargu-
ment this Term. See 606 U. S. 923 (2025). We ordered sup-
plemental briefng on the following question: “Whether the
State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority
congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth
Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.” 606 U. S. 993
(2025). And because the State's intentional creation of a
second majority-minority district had been prompted by an
order suggesting that such a district is required by the Vot-
ing Rights Act, our question necessarily implicated the cor-
rectness of our longstanding assumption that compliance
with the Voting Rights Act may justify what the Constitu-
tion generally condemns: the use of race as a basis for gov-
ernment action. This question was pending in several
lower-court cases, but in light of the potential impact of those
cases on upcoming elections, we concluded that resolution of
the question in this suit was appropriate.
III
A
In considering whether the Constitution permits the inten-
tional use of race to comply with the Voting Rights Act, we
start with the general rule that the Constitution almost
never permits the Federal Government or a State to discrim-
inate on the basis of race. Such discrimination triggers
strict scrutiny, and our precedents have identifed “only two
compelling interests” that can satisfy that standard. SFFA,
600 U. S., at 207. One compelling interest, not relevant
here, is “avoiding imminent and serious risks to human
safety in prisons, such as a race riot.” Ibid.; see Johnson v.
California, 543 U. S. 499, 512–513 (2005). The only other
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compelling interest we have found is “remediating specifc,
identi
fed instances of past discrimination that violated the
Constitution or a statute.” SFFA, 600 U. S., at 207.
To “rise to the level of a compelling state interest,” an
effort to remediate past discrimination “must satisfy two
conditions.” Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 909. “First, the discrim-
ination must be `identifed discrimination.' ” Ibid. (quoting
Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 499, 500, 505,
507, 509 (1989)). In other words, the State or Federal Gov-
ernment must identify the specifc instances of past discrimi-
nation that it aims to remediate and, in light of that specif-
cation, must “ `determine the precise scope of the injury it
seeks to remedy.' ” 517 U. S., at 909 (quoting Croson, 488
U. S., at 498 (opinion for the Court)). The States and Fed-
eral Government have no compelling interest in generally
remediating “past discrimination in a particular industry or
region” or “the effects of societal discrimination.” 517 U. S.,
at 909–910. Second, after identifying the specifc instance
of discrimination, “the institution that makes the racial dis-
tinction must have . . . a `strong basis in evidence' to conclude
that [its] remedial action [is] necessary.” Id., at 910 (quoting
Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 277 (1986)).
“Our acceptance of race-based state action has been rare
for a reason.” SFFA, 600 U. S., at 208. “ `Distinctions be-
tween citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their
very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are
founded upon the doctrine of equality.' ” Ibid. (quoting Rice
v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000)). And in redistricting,
“where the State assumes from a group of voters' race that
they `think alike, share the same political interests, and will
prefer the same candidates at the polls,' it engages in racial
stereotyping at odds with equal protection mandates.”
Miller, 515 U. S., at 920 (quoting Shaw I, 509 U. S. 630, 647
(1993)).
The question before us now is whether compliance with
the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short list
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of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination.
T
o answer that question, we must understand exactly what
§ 2 of the Voting Rights Act demands with respect to the
drawing of legislative districts. We therefore turn to the
text of that provision.
B
1
As amended in 1982, § 2 states:
“(a) No voting qualifcation 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 pro-
tected by subsection (a) in that its members have less
opportunity than other members of the electorate to
participate in the political process and to elect repre-
sentatives of their choice. The extent to which mem-
bers of a protected class have been elected to offce 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 pro-
tected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion
in the population.” 52 U. S. C. § 10301.
This is not the easiest language to parse, and we will
therefore break it down in steps. Beginning with subsec-
tion (a), we take as given that a legislative districting map
may constitute a “standard, practice, or procedure.” If that
were not so, there would have been no statutory basis for
any of our § 2 vote-dilution cases. See Holder v. Hall, 512
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U. S. 874, 895–896 (1994) (Thomas, J., concurring in judg-
ment).
Therefore, subsection (a) means that a districting
map may run afoul of § 2 if it “results in a denial or abridge-
ment” of the right to vote “on account of race or color.” § 2(a).
With that established, subsection (b) explains when such a
denial or abridgment occurs: when “the political processes
leading to nomination or election” are “not equally open to
participation by” members of a racial group of voters “in
that [they] have less opportunity than other members of the
electorate to . . . elect representatives of their choice.”
§ 2(b).
In this complicated verbal formulation, the key concept for
present purposes is “less opportunity than other members of
the electorate to . . . elect representatives of their choice.”
Ibid. This language sets a baseline against which to assess
the opportunity of minority voters: the “opportunity” that
“other members of the electorate” have “to elect” their pre-
ferred candidates. To understand this baseline, we must
nail down the meaning of three terms: “less opportunity,”
“other members of the electorate,” and “elect.”
In isolation, “opportunity” could refer to either a desired
outcome or a chance to achieve that outcome. As used in
§ 2(b), however, “opportunity” must mean a chance to achieve
a desired result, because the Voting Rights Act does not
guarantee equal outcomes. See White, 412 U. S., at 765–766.
Accordingly, “less opportunity” must mean a lesser chance.
In ordinary usage, “less opportunity” often takes on such
meaning. One might say, for example, that men under 6 feet
tall have less opportunity to play in the NBA than those who
stand at least 6 feet 7 inches (the current median).
The next term—“other members of the electorate”—speci-
fes the comparator to be used in determining whether the
group protected by subsection (a) has suffered or is threat-
ened with suffering “less opportunity . . . to elect representa-
tives of their choice.” In conceptualizing the members of
this comparator group, we may think of a randomly selected
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member of the electorate who has particular voting prefer-
ences,
or we may think of a randomly selected group of vot-
ers who share certain voting preferences. These voting
preferences may be based on a candidate's party affliation,
ideology, stance on a particular policy issue, personal cha-
risma, or some other characteristic or set of characteristics.
But whatever they are, the situation of these randomly se-
lected voters must be compared with that of minority voters
alleged to have suffered vote dilution.
This brings us to the fnal term: “to elect.” As used in
§ 2(b), this term must refer to the achievement of electoral
victory by casting a ballot.
Putting all these terms together, the baseline is the chance
enjoyed by nonminority voters to secure the election of their
preferred candidates. What, then, is the chance that any
given nonminority voter or group of nonminority voters has
to secure the election of a preferred candidate? The answer
to this question depends on the voting preferences of other
voters in the district. For example, in a district where most
voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Republican voter in
that district will have a low chance of securing the election
of his or her preferred candidate. But that chance would be
substantially higher if the district were instead flled with
voters who prefer Republican candidates. The roster of
voters who end up in a given district depends, in turn, on
the districting criteria used by the State in drawing a legis-
lative map.
If a districting map is produced by computer, as is gener-
ally the case today, we may think of all the parameters in
the algorithm that the mapmaker uses. One necessary pa-
rameter would be the number of districts required by law,
and another would have to be a range of inter-district popu-
lation variations that is small enough to comply with the one-
person, one-vote requirement. The algorithm might then go
on to lay out and assign priorities to whatever additional
permissible criteria the legislature chooses to use. For ex-
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ample, the legislature might want to minimize changes in the
pr
ior map, avoid districts with discontiguous territory, and
avoid splitting counties or municipalities. It might impose
a certain standard of compactness, aim to protect some or all
incumbents, or promote the prospects of a particular political
party. When this algorithm is used, the map it produces
may place a particular voter or group of voters in a district
in which a majority generally agrees, generally disagrees, or
only sometimes agrees with their voting preferences. But
in any event, the “opportunity” of these “members of the
electorate” to contribute their votes to a winning cause is
whatever opportunity results from the application of the
State's combination of permissible criteria.
That is what our randomly selected individual voter and
group of voters can expect regarding their opportunity to
elect a preferred candidate. And under § 2, a minority voter
is entitled to nothing less and nothing more.
2
Not only is this the best reading of the statutory text, but
it also ensures that § 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not
exceed Congress's authority under § 2 of the Fifteenth
Amendment. That provision confers the “power to enforce
[the Amendment] by appropriate legislation.” Thus, to lie
within Congress's authority, § 2 of the Voting Rights Act
must “effectuate by `appropriate' measures the constitutional
prohibition” in § 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment. Katzen-
bach, 383 U. S., at 308.
Our Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment jurisprudence
delineates what constitutes “appropriate” legislation in the
sense relevant here. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S.
507, 518 (1997) (stating that Congress has “parallel power
to enforce the provisions” of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments). In legislation enforcing these Amendments,
“[t]here must be a congruence and proportionality between
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the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means
adopted
to that end.” Id., at 520.
As the Court has long held, the Fifteenth Amendment
bars only state action “ `motivated by a discriminatory pur-
pose.' ” Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471,
481 (1997) (quoting Mobile, 446 U. S., at 62). So a law that
seeks to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting
mere disparate impact would fail to enforce a right that the
Amendment secures. That is never “appropriate,” Katzen-
bach, 383 U. S., at 308, because Congress cannot “enforce a
constitutional right by changing what the right is,” City of
Boerne, 521 U. S., at 519.
For this reason, the focus of § 2 must be enforcement of
the Fifteenth Amendment's prohibition on intentional racial
discrimination. When § 2 is properly interpreted in the way
we have outlined, it is suffciently congruent with and pro-
portional to the Amendment's prohibition. While that in-
terpretation does not demand a fnding of intentional dis-
crimination, it imposes liability only when the circumstances
give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination
occurred. Suppose, for example, that the application of a
State's districting algorithm yields numerous maps with dis-
tricts in which the members of a minority group constitute
a majority, and suppose that the State cannot provide a legit-
imate reason for rejecting all those maps and eliminating all
majority-minority districts. In such a situation, the infer-
ence of racial motivation is strong, and § 2 of the Fifteenth
Amendment permits the imposition of liability without de-
manding that the courts engage in the fraught enterprise of
attempting to determine whether the state legislature as an
institution, as opposed to certain individual members or the
State's hired mapmaker, was motivated by race.
Only when understood this way does § 2 of the Voting
Rights Act properly ft within Congress's Fifteenth Amend-
ment enforcement power. See, e. g., I. N. S. v. St. Cyr, 533
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U. S. 289, 299–300 (2001) (“[I]f an otherwise acceptable con-
str
uction of a statute would raise serious constitutional prob-
lems, and where an alternative interpretation of the statute
is `fairly possible,' we are obligated to construe the statute
to avoid such problems” (citation omitted)). By contrast, in-
terpreting § 2 of the Voting Rights Act to outlaw a map solely
because it fails to provide a suffcient number of majority-
minority districts would create a right that the Amendment
does not protect. And such an interpretation would run
headlong into the Act's express disclaimer against racial
proportionality.
Properly understood, § 2 thus does not intrude on States'
prerogative to draw districts based on nonracial factors.
“Redistricting constitutes a traditional domain of state legis-
lative authority.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 7. The Constitu-
tion imposes some important restrictions on the States' exer-
cise of this power, but they are otherwise free to draw
districts as they please. We have held that they may use
traditional districting factors such as “compactness, contigu-
ity,” “maintaining the integrity of political subdivisions, pre-
serving the core of existing districts,” and protecting incum-
bents. Bush, 517 U. S., at 964; Miller, 515 U. S., at 906, 916.
Nothing in the Constitution requires States to heed these
criteria, of course, and the desirability of some of these crite-
ria might be disputed. But because they are not forbidden
by the Constitution, it is up to each State to decide what
weight, if any, they warrant.
The same is true with respect to the drawing of districts
to achieve partisan advantage. Disapproval of partisan ger-
rymandering dates back to the founding. See Rucho v.
Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684, 696–697 (2019). But partisan
gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court.
Id., at 718. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate
political power between the two major political parties, with
no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no
legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.” Ibid.
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Thus, in considering the constitutionality of a districting
scheme
, courts must treat partisan advantage like any other
race-neutral aim: a constitutionally permissible criterion that
States may rely on as desired.
For this reason, as we have repeatedly made clear, when
a State defends a districting scheme on the ground that it
was drawn for partisan purposes, plaintiffs have a “ `special' ”
burden to overcome. Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9 (quoting
Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308). “To prevail,” the plaintiff “must
`disentangle race from politics' by proving `that the former
drove a district's lines.' ” 602 U. S., at 9 (quoting Cooper,
581 U. S., at 308). “That means, among other things, ruling
out the competing explanation that political considerations
dominated the legislature's redistricting efforts. If either
politics or race could explain a district's contours, the plain-
tiff has not cleared its bar.” 602 U. S., at 9–10; see Eas-
ley v. Cromartie, 532 U. S. 234, 258 (2001) (Cromartie II) (re-
jecting a racial gerrymandering claim when the plaintiffs
failed to show “that the legislature could have achieved
its legitimate political objectives in alternative ways that
are comparably consistent w ith traditi ona l distr ic ti ng
principles”).
A plaintiff may carry its disentanglement burden by offer-
ing an alternative map that achieves all the State's objec-
tives—including partisan advantage and any of the State's
other political goals—at least as well as the State's map.
See Alexander, 602 U. S., at 10; Cromartie II, 532 U. S., at
258. Today, § 2 litigants almost always have the where-
withal to proffer such a map if there is one to be found. See
Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, 607
U. S. ––– (2025) (holding that the lack of an alternative map
merits a “dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference”
against a racial-gerrymandering plaintiff ); Alexander, 602
U. S., at 10 (“[A]ny plaintiff with a strong case has had every
incentive to produce such an alternative map”); see also
Allen, 599 U. S., at 23 (observing that “modern computer
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technology” allows challengers to “generate millions of possi-
ble
districting maps for a given State”). But if a § 2 plaintiff
cannot disentangle race from the State's race-neutral consid-
erations, including politics, then § 2 cannot impose liability.
In short, § 2 imposes liability only when the evidence sup-
ports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its
districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because
of their race. Not only does this interpretation follow from
the plain text of § 2, but it is consistent with the limited au-
thority that the Fifteenth Amendment confers.
C
This interpretation of § 2 does not require abandonment of
the Gingles framework. We need only update the frame-
work so it aligns with the statutory text and refects impor-
tant developments since we decided Gingles 40 years ago.
Four historical developments are of particular note.
First, vast social change has occurred throughout the coun-
try and particularly in the South, where many § 2 suits arise.
As this Court has recognized, “things have changed dramati-
cally” in the decades since the passage of the Voting Rights
Act. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529, 547 (2013). At
the time of the Act's passage, the Nation had faced nearly a
century of “entrenched racial discrimination in voting, `an
insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in
certain parts of our country through unremitting and inge-
nious defance of the Constitution.' ” Id., at 535 (quoting
Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 309). But the Voting Rights Act
led to “great strides” in the ensuing decades: “voting tests
were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout
due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained po-
litical offce in record numbers.” 570 U. S., at 549, 553. By
2004, the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had
largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting
at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Id., at 547–
548. Black voters now participate in elections at similar
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rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher
rates
than white voters in two of the fve most recent Presi-
dential elections nationwide and in Louisiana. See Supp.
Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13 (citing Dept. of
Commerce, Census Bureau, Voting and Registration Tables
(Election of Nov. 2024) (Apr. 2025)).
Second, a full-blown two-party system has emerged in the
States where § 2 suits are most common. Gingles arose in
the context of a one-party system in which black and white
voters had starkly different voting patterns despite their af-
fliation within the same party. 478 U. S., at 59. In the area
involved in Gingles, an overwhelming majority of white vot-
ers did not vote for any black candidate in the Democratic
party primary elections, which for all practical purposes se-
lected the candidates who would ultimately obtain offce.
Ibid. And in general elections, white voters in heavily
Democratic areas often ranked black candidates last among
Democrats. Ibid. Such intra-party disparities showed that
black voters had less opportunity to elect their preferred
candidate because of their race, not because of their parti-
san affliation.
When the vast majority of voters, regardless of race, fa-
vors the same political party, a map that is disadvantageous
for members of one racial group cannot be explained on the
ground that it was drawn to favor a particular political party.
But in a State where both parties have substantial support
and where race is often correlated with party preference, a
litigant can easily exploit § 2 for partisan purposes by “re-
packag[ing] a partisan-gerrymandering claim as a racial-
gerrymandering claim.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 21.
That brings us to the third signifcant post-Gingles devel-
opment: this Court's decision in Rucho. In that decision, we
held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are not justicia-
ble in federal court. See 588 U. S., at 704–710. The upshot
of Rucho was that, as far as federal law is concerned, a state
legislature may use partisan advantage as a factor in redis-
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tricting. And litigants cannot circumvent that rule by
dressi
ng their political-gerrymandering claims in racial garb.
Imposing liability “based on the racial effects of a political
gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan
preference are very closely correlated . . . would, if accepted,
provide a convenient way for future litigants and lower
courts to sidestep our holding in Rucho that partisan-
gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court.”
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 21. “Instead of claiming that a
State impermissibly set a target Republican-Democratic
breakdown, a plaintiff could simply reverse-engineer the par-
tisan data into racial data and argue that the State imper-
missibly set a particular [racial] target. Our decisions can-
not be evaded with such ease.” Ibid.
The fourth signifcant development since Gingles is the in-
creased use and capabilities of computers in drawing dis-
tricts and creating illustrative maps. With “modern com-
puter technology” at the ready, § 2 plaintiffs invariably
invoke the assistance of experts who can generate thou-
sands—or even millions—of maps. Allen, 599 U. S., at 23;
see id., at 33, 36 (involving more than 2 million expert-gener-
ated maps). Computer algorithms can “easily contro[l] for
partisan preferences” and “other redistricting factors such
as compactness and county splits.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at
25. With the advent of such technology, if it is possible to
identify an alternative map that fully achieves all the State's
legitimate goals while producing “ `greater racial balance,' ”
then a § 2 plaintiff can easily do so. Id., at 34–35 (quoting
Cromartie II, 532 U. S., at 258).
In light of these signifcant developments, it is appropriate
to update the Gingles framework and realign it with the text
of § 2 and constitutional principles.
1. First Gingles Precondition
The frst Gingles precondition is that a community of mi-
nority voters must be suffciently numerous and compact to
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constitute a majority in a reasonably confgured district. To
satisfy
this precondition, many § 2 plaintiffs have simply
provided illustrative maps with their desired number of
majority-minority districts. E. g., Allen, 599 U. S., at 20.
Such maps, however, are not alone suffcient. They prove
only that the State could create an additional majority-
minority district, not that the State's failure to do so violated
§ 2 of the Voting Rights Act. To make the latter showing,
plaintiffs' illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions.
First, in drawing illustrative maps, plaintiffs cannot use
race as a districting criterion. If a plaintiff can produce an
additional majority-minority district only by using race—a
process that would be unconstitutional if a State engaged in
such mapmaking, see Alexander, 602 U. S., at 6—that illus-
trative map sheds no light on whether the State acted uncon-
stitutionally by not adopting such a map. Thus, an illustra-
tive map in which race was used has no value in proving a
§ 2 plaintiff 's case.
Second, illustrative maps must meet all the State's legiti-
mate districting objectives, including traditional districting
criteria and the State's specifed political goals. If the
State's aims in drawing a map include a target partisan dis-
tribution of voters, a specifc margin of victory for certain
incumbents, or any other goal not prohibited by the Consti-
tution, the plaintiffs' illustrative maps must achieve these
goals just as well. If not, the plaintiffs would fail to demon-
strate that the State's chosen map was driven by racial con-
siderations rather than permissible aims. Only by meeting
all the State's legitimate objectives can the illustrative maps
help to “disentangle race” from politics and other constitu-
tionally permissible considerations. Ibid.
2. Second and Third Gingles Preconditions
To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically
cohesive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the
majority—the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that con-
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trols for party affliation. In other words, they must show
that
voters engage in racial bloc voting that cannot be ex-
plained by partisan affliation. This is, once again, critical
for “disentangl[ing] race and politics.” Alexander, 602 U. S.,
at 6.
The facts of Gingles afford a good example of how a § 2
plaintiff can properly meet these preconditions. There, as
discussed, black and white voters had dramatically different
voting patterns within the Democratic party. 478 U. S., at
59. This type of intra-party racial-bloc voting pattern helps
to demonstrate that the minority plaintiffs have “less oppor-
tunity” than their majority counterparts because of race, not
just because of partisan affliation. 52 U. S. C. § 10301(b).
By contrast, simply pointing to inter-party racial polariza-
tion proves nothing, because “ `a jurisdiction may engage in
constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens
that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats
and even if the State were conscious of that fact.' ” Alex-
ander, 602 U. S., at 9 (quoting Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U. S.
541, 551 (1999)).
3. Totality of Circumstances
Last, the “totality of circumstances” inquiry must focus on
evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what the
Fifteenth Amendment prohibits: present-day intentional ra-
cial discrimination regarding voting.
Discrimination that occurred some time ago, as well as
present-day disparities that are characterized as the ongoing
“effects of societal discrimination,” are entitled to much less
weight. Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 909–910. Far more germane
are “current data” and “ `current political conditions' ” that
shed light on current intentional discrimination. Shelby
County, 570 U. S., at 552–553 (quoting Northwest Austin Mu-
nicipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 203
(2009)). “[I]n large part because of the Voting Rights Act[,]
. . . our Nation has made great strides” in eliminating racial
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discrimination in voting. Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 548–
549.
And if, as a result of this progress, it is hard to fnd
pertinent evidence relating to intentional present-day voting
discrimination, that is cause for celebration.
D
Nothing in Allen dictates a result that differs from the one
we reach today. The decision in that case was based on the
State of Alabama's specifc argument that its “race-neutral
benchmark ” was “necessary in any redistr ic ti ng case. ”
Brief for Appellants in Allen v. Milligan, O. T. 2022, Nos.
21–1086 etc., pp. 43–44 (Brief for Alabama). Alabama ar-
gued that deriving this benchmark—the “median or average
number of major ity-mi nor ity distr ic ts” i n a race-bli nd
“multimillion-map set,” Allen, 599 U. S., at 23—required
“computer simulations that are technically complicated, ex-
pensive to produce, and available to `[o]nly a small cadre of
university researchers [that] have the resources and exper-
tise to run' them,” id., at 36 (quoting Brief for United States
as Amicus Curiae 28). Nonetheless, the State contended
that its race-neutral benchmark was “the only plausible test”
to ensure that § 2 stays within “constitutional guardrails.”
Brief for Alabama 44, 75. We rejected that “single-minded
view.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 26. Allen, in short, was about
whether Alabama's novel evidentiary standard required a
change to our existing § 2 precedent. See Tr. of Oral Arg.
8–9. It did not.
Allen did not address the central issue here. We had no
occasion in Allen to confront the presumption that compli-
ance with § 2 may serve as a compelling interest for a State
to satisfy strict scrutiny. Indeed, Allen did not discuss the
Fourteenth Amendment at all. Here, by contrast, it is the
linchpin of this suit.
2
2
The dissent claims that the Fourteenth Amendment is irrelevant to our
analysis, post, at 165, n. 11 (opinion of Kagan, J.), but the dissent ap-
pears to forget—or at least tries to lead readers to forget—that the deci-

122 LOUISIAN
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In addition, our decision in Allen did not reach two pivotal
issues
that we now squarely address. First, we left open
whether “race-based redistricting ” under § 2, even if permis-
sible when the Voting Rights Act was amended in 1982, could
“extend indefnitely into the future” despite signifcant
changes in relevant conditions. 599 U. S., at 45 (Kava-
naugh, J., concurring in part); see Shelby County, 570 U. S.,
at 557 (requiring assessment of the constitutionality of the
Voting Rights Act in light of current conditions). Second,
because the State in Allen did not cite partisan goals in de-
fending its map, we did not address whether § 2 plaintiffs
must disentangle race from politics in proving their case.
Indeed, this is our frst occasion to address the implications
of Rucho in a vote-dilution case. Failing to account for po-
litical considerations in redistricting, as explained above, can
allow plaintiffs to undo a State's legitimate, nonracial deci-
sions under the banner of § 2. In light of our answers to
these questions left open in Allen, we now update the Gin-
gles test to ensure a constitutional reading and application
of § 2.
IV
Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this
suit easily require affrmance.
Louisiana's enactment of SB8 triggered strict scrutiny be-
cause the State's underlying goal was racial. The State
never hid the ball: It confgured District 6 to achieve a black
voting-age population over 50% because it knew that if it
failed to do so, the Robinson court would very likely fnd its
map unlawful and order the use of something like the Robin-
son plaintiffs' illustrative maps, which would have imperiled
one of the infuential incumbents the legislature sought to
sion before us is based on the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs
claimed, and the court below held, that the map enacted by the state legis-
lature in SB8 impermissibly discriminated on the basis of race and thus
violated the plaintiffs' rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal
Protection Clause. See supra, at 106.
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protect. The State's intentional compliance with the court's
demands
constituted an “express acknowledgment that race
played a role in the drawing of district lines.” Alexander,
602 U. S., at 8. Louisiana therefore had to satisfy the “ex-
traordinarily onerous” standard of proving that its use of
race was narrowly tailored to further a compelling govern-
mental interest. Id., at 11.
No compelling interest justifes SB8. Section 2 does not
provide a compelling interest because the State did not need
to create a new majority-minority district to comply with the
Act. That is because at every step of the Gingles frame-
work, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their § 2 case.
On the frst Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs
did not meet their burden because they did not provide an
illustrative map that met all the State's nonracial goals.
The most obvious defcit in the plaintiffs' illustrative maps
was the failure to meet the State's political goals, includ-
ing incumbency protection. The plaintiffs' preferred map
would have placed Representative Letlow in a majority
Democratic district and thus effectively ensured her exit
from Congress. See Brief for Appellant in No. 24–109, at
14; 2 App. to Juris. Statement in No. 24–110, p. 673a (placing
Representative Letlow in a district with over twice as many
registered Democrats as registered Republicans).
The Robinson court erroneously concluded that the plain-
tiffs' illustrative maps protected incumbents because the
maps left all six Representatives “in the district where they
currently live” and “could avoid incumbent pairing.” 605
F. Supp. 3d, at 830. That observation missed the point: An
incumbent is not protected if he or she will lose re-election.
And because the plaintiffs' illustrative maps failed to protect
all the incumbents that the State sought to shield, the plain-
tiffs did not meet their burden on this precondition.
Nor did the plaintiffs meet their burden on the second and
third Gingles preconditions. To show racially polarized vot-
ing, the Robinson plaintiffs offered evidence that black and
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white voters consistently supported different candidates, but
their
analysis did not control for partisan preferences. See
605 F. Supp. 3d, at 840.
Even if the Robinson plaintiffs had met their burden on
the Gingles preconditions, they still would have failed to
show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination
based on the totality of circumstances. The Robinson court
went through the nine Senate Report factors, but none of
the evidence it cited showed even a plausible likelihood of
intentional discrimination by the State. Much of the cited
evidence—such as the low number of black Louisianans who
have been elected to Congress in recent decades—failed to
disentangle race from politics. See 605 F. Supp. 3d, at 845–
846. Indeed, the court observed that black voters have been
aligned with the Democratic party for decades and that is-
sues discussed by that party appealed to black voters. Id.,
at 845. Those observations should have undercut, not
strengthened, any showing of intentional racial discrimina-
tion because race and politics are so intertwined.
The Robinson court also relied on the “ `sordid history' ”
of intentional discrimination by Louisianian offcials in the
decades before the Voting Rights Act's passage. Id., at 846.
And it cast aside as “irrelevant” the lack of evidence that
black voters had faced intentional discrimination in recent
years. Id., at 847. That analysis had its priorities back-
wards. The Fi f teenth Amendment, wh ich the Voti ng
Rights Act enforces, “is not designed to punish for the past”
but works “to ensure a better future.” Shelby County, 570
U. S., at 553. The focus of § 2 must therefore be on “current
conditions,” not on “decades-old data relevant to decades-old
problems.” Ibid. And none of the historical evidence pre-
sented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likeli-
hood that the State's challenged map was the result of inten-
tional racial discrimination.
In sum, because the Voting Rights Act did not require
Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district,
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no compelling interest justifed the State's use of race in cre-
ati
ng SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,
and its use would violate the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
V
The dissent's arguments are fully addressed in the prior
sections of this opinion, but in closing we emphasize three
points.
First, the dissent states over and over again that our deci-
sion requires a § 2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent.
Post, at 132, 149–152, 155–158, 162, 164–166, 170–171. What
must be shown is exactly what the 1982 amendment of § 2
called for. A § 2 plaintiff in a vote dilution case must show
that a districting scheme denies members of a racial group
the same “opportunity” as other voters to elect the candi-
dates they prefer. Supra, at 110–112. When that is shown,
the circumstances are comparable to those in White, 412
U. S. 755, the decision from which the new language added
by Congress in 1982 was drawn. That is, the circumstances
must give rise to a strong inference of racial discrimination.
See supra, at 113–116.
Second, contrary to the dissent's assertion, we have not
overruled Allen. As is our general practice, the Allen
Court adjudicated the case based on the parties' arguments,
and in that case, the State did not defend its map on the
ground that it was drawn to achieve a political objective.
See supra, at 121–122. Here, the State has been forthright
from the beginning that its aim was to protect the State's
most prominent Republican House Members. One may la-
ment partisan gerrymandering, but for the reasons explained
in Rucho, partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable
in federal court. And in a racial gerrymandering case like
the one before us, race and politics must be disentangled,
as even the author of the dissent has acknowledged. See
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9; Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308 (opin-
i on for the Cour t by Kagan, J.) ( holdi ng that a racia l-
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Thomas, J., concurring
gerrymandering plaintiff must “disentangle race from poli-
tics
and prove that the former drove a district's lines”).
That is true regardless whether the case is brought pursuant
to the Fourteenth Amendment or the VRA, since § 2 of the
VRA requires evidence giving rise to a strong inference of
intentional discrimination. If race and politics are not dis-
entangled and a § 2 claim is cynically used as a tool for ad-
vancing a partisan end, the VRA's noble goal will be
perverted.
Third, while the dissent wraps itself in the mantle of stare
decisis, the dissent is unabashedly at war with key prece-
dents. See post, at 170 (claiming that Rucho was disas-
trously wrong and should be cabined); post, at 132, 134–135,
168 (repeatedly criticizing Shelby County and citing the dis-
sent in that case); post, at 130–131 (criticizing the Court's
decision in Brnovich). Respect for precedent cannot be a
one-way street.
***
The judgment of the District Court is affrmed, and these
cases are remanded for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Gorsuch joins,
concurring.
I join the Court's opinion in full. This Court should never
have interpreted § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effec-
tively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly propor-
tional representation.” Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30,
93 (1986) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); see ante, at
113–114. By doing so, the Court led legislatures and courts
to “systematically divid[e] the country into electoral districts
along racial lines.” Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 905 (1994)
(Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). “Blacks [we]re
drawn into `black districts' and given `black representatives';
Hispanics [we]re drawn into Hispanic districts and given
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`Hispanic representatives'; and so on.” Ibid. That inter-
pret
ation rendered § 2 “repugnant to any nation that strives
for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” Id., at 905–906.
Today's decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous
misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence. Id., at 893.
As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further
and hold that § 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate
districting at all. See id., at 922–923. The relevant text
prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting qualif-
cation,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or
procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridge-
ment of the r ight to vote based on race. 52 U. S. C.
§ 10301(a). How States draw district lines does not fall
within any of those three categories. Holder, 512 U. S., at
922–923 (opinion of Thomas, J.); Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S.
1, 46 (2023) (Thomas, J., dissenting). The words in § 2 in-
stead “reach only `enactments that regulate citizens' access
to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot'; they `do
not include a State's . . . choice of one districting scheme over
another.' ” 599 U. S., at 46 (quoting Holder, 512 U. S., at 945
(opinion of Thomas, J.)). Therefore, no § 2 challenge to dis-
tricting should ever succeed.
Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Sotomayor and
Justice Jackson join, dissenting.
Consider the story of a hypothetical congressional district
in a hypothetical State, subjected to a redistricting scheme.
The example is admittedly stylized, but in its essence simu-
lates the dispute before us, and clarifes the immense issues
at stake. The district, let's say, is a single county, in the
shape of a near-perfect circle, sitting in the middle of a rect-
angular State. The State is one with a long history of viru-
lent racial discrimination, and its many effects, including in
residential segregation and political division, remain signif-
cant even today. The population of the circle district is 90%
Black; the rest of the State, divided into fve surrounding

128 LOUISIAN
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districts, is 90% White. And voting throughout all those
distr
icts is racially polarized: Black residents vote heavily
for Democratic candidates, while White residents vote heav-
ily for Republicans. The circle district thus enables the
State's Black community to elect a representative of its
choice, whom no neighboring community would put in offce.
But that arrangement, in this not-so-hypothetical, is not to
last. The state legislature decides to eliminate the circle
district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one each
to six new, still solidly White congressional districts. The
State's Black voters are now widely dispersed, and (unlike
the State's White voters) lack any ability to elect a repre-
sentative of their choice. Election after election, Black citi-
zens' votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.
That is racial vote dilution in its most classic form. A
minority community that is cohesive in its geography and
politics alike, and that faces continued adversity from racial
division, is split—“cracked” is the usual term—so that it
loses all its electoral infuence. Members of the racial mi-
nority can still go to the polls and cast a ballot. But given
the State's racially polarized voting, they cannot hope—in
the way the State's White citizens can—to elect a person
who they think will well represent their interests. Their
votes matter less than others' do; they translate into less
political voice. Or, as this Court put it recently, the cracking
makes “a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority
voter.” Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, 25 (2023).
And because that is so, Congress in the Voting Rights Act
made the practice illegal. Section 2 of that Act guarantees
that members of every racial group have an equal “opportu-
nity” to “elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U. S. C.
§ 10301(b). That promise arose from a far-too-prominent
part of this Nation's history. Even after the Fifteenth
Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting, state of-
fcials routinely deprived African Americans of their voting
rights. Through a seemingly boundless array of mecha-
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nisms—most of them facially race-neutral and among them
the
drawing of district lines—States either prevented Black
citizens from casting ballots or ensured that their votes
would count for next to nothing. The Voting Rights Act was
meant as the corrective. And when this Court construed it
too narrowly—insisting that a person suing under Section 2
had to prove discriminatory intent—Congress amended the
law so that it turned solely on discriminatory effects.
Under that revised version, a person has a good Section 2
claim if the challenged state action, in the “totality of circum-
stances,” “results in” an electoral system “not equally open”
to members of his racial group—meaning a system giving
those citizens “less opportunity” to “participate in the politi-
cal process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
§ 10301 (emphasis added). And for 40 years now, this Court
has recognized that language to encompass districting deci-
sions that, in the way illustrated above, result in vote dilu-
tion—the “minimiz[ing]” of minority voters' “ability to elect
their preferred candidates.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 18 (quoting
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 48 (1986)).
But no longer. Under the Court's new view of Section 2,
a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute
minority citizens' voting power. Of course, the majority
does not announce today's holding that way. Its opinion is
understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to
be “updat[ing]” our Section 2 law, as though through a few
technical tweaks. Ante, at 116, 118, 122. But in fact, those
“updates” eviscerate the law, so that it will not remedy even
the classic example of vote dilution given above. Without a
basis in Section 2's text or the Constitution, the majority
formulates new proof requirements for plaintiffs alleging
vote dilution. Those demands, meant to “disentangle race
from politics,” ante, at 115, leverage two features of modern
political life: that racial identity and party preference are
often linked and that politicians have free rein to adopt parti-
san gerrymanders. The frst fact—say, that in a given area,
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Black voters mainly support Democrats and White voters
Republ
icans—was viewed before today as practically an ele-
ment of a vote-dilution claim, because it indicates that a mi-
nority group is politically cohesive enough to elect a pre-
ferred representative but will be outvoted by the majority
bloc. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 18, 22. The second fact—the
result of a prior mistake by this Court—is something every
day to regret, not to use as an excuse for stripping minority
citizens of their voting rights. But under the majority's new
test, when those two facts coexist—which is almost every-
where Section 2 still has purchase—a plaintiff cannot prevail
by showing that a redistricting resulted in the dilution of
minority voting power. Rather, a plaintiff will have to
show—contrary to Section 2's clear text and design—that
the legislators were “motivated by a discriminatory pur-
pose.” Ante, at 113 (emphasis added). And that, as Section
2's drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.
Today's ruling is part of a set: For over a decade, this
Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act. In
2013, the Court made a nullity of Section 5, the provision of
the Act enabling the Department of Justice to review and
block new voting rules—including redistrictings—in juris-
dictions with a history of voter suppression. See Shelby
County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529 (2013). Congress had re-
cently, and after lengthy study, reauthorized that preclear-
ance mechanism. It found the scheme still essential to coun-
ter the protean techniques States can use to prevent
minorities from exercising their fair share of political in-
fuence. But this Court thought it knew better. “[T]hings
have changed dramatically,” the Court explained, id., at
547, ignoring that whether things had changed dramatically
enough to make the law dispensable was a question better
left to its democratically accountable authors. Not sur-
prisingly, a food of discriminatory voting laws followed,
and now only Section 2 stood in the gap. In 2021, the Court
did half what was needed to raze that section too. See

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Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. 647
(2021).
Section 2 prohibits not only vote-diluting districting
plans, but also discriminatory burdens on the casting of bal-
lots. In a suit involving the latter type of law, the Court
invented a new legal standard making Section 2 useless, on
the theory that the statute as written was too “radical.”
See id., at 674. Since the Court ruled, not a single Section 2
suit has successfully challenged such a restriction on voting,
however discriminatory in operation. See R. Hasen, The
Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Trans-
formation of U. S. Election Law, 134 Yale L. J. 1673, 1686
(2025).
And fnally, today, the last piece—Section 2 as applied to
redistricting. The last, and surely the hardest, for just
three Terms ago the Court upheld a vote-dilution challenge
to a districting map in a case much like this one—preserving
Section 2 as a tool to prevent racially discriminatory redis-
tricting. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 17. “[W]e decline to
adopt,” the Court said then, “an interpretation of § 2 that
would revise and reformulate” our “§ 2 jurisprudence [of]
nearly forty years.” Id., at 26. Nothing has changed in the
three years since. Yet today, the majority does “revise and
reformulate” . . . and destroy. It avails itself again of the
tools used before to dismantle the Act: untenable readings of
statutory text, made-up and impossible-to-meet evidentiary
requirements, disregard for precedent, and disdain for con-
gressional judgment. And in that way it greenlights redis-
tricting plans that will disable minority communities—in
Louisiana and across the Nation—from electing, as major-
ity communities can, “representatives of their choice.”
§ 10301(b). What if the districts in which minority citizens
exercise voting power are sliced up, and the pieces appended
to districts in which they can play no meaningful role? The
majority tells us that the inability to make out a Section 2
claim will just be a mark of the Nation's progress, and there-
fore “cause for celebration.” Ante, at 121.
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I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accu-
rately
, was—“one of the most consequential, effcacious, and
amply justifed exercises of federal legislative power in our
Nation's history.” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 562 (Gins-
burg, J., dissenting). It was born of the literal blood of
Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-
inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulflling the
ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been re-
peatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people's
representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to
say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court.
I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority's
now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.
I
I begin with some history—both with what led originally
to the Voting Rights Act and with how the current Section
2 came to be. The point is not to deliver a eulogy for the
law—though, in truth, the Court's step-by-step slaying of
voting rights now makes one appropriate. Rather, the ob-
ject is to reveal how far today's decision repudiates past, and
rightfully still controlling, congressional choices. As I'll
later explain, the majority now demands that vote-dilution
plaintiffs muster proof of racially discriminatory motive.
See infra, at 149–158. In that way, the decision echoes an
earlier one of this Court, which also held that Section 2
should function as an intent test. See Mobile v. Bolden, 446
U. S. 55 (1980). But Congress, as you'll soon see, amended
Section 2 to reject that view: In light of the way voting dis-
crimination had operated since the Fifteenth Amendment's
adoption, Congress instead drafted Section 2 to bar the use
of any electoral mechanism that would result in minority cit-
izens having less opportunity than non-minority citizens to
choose their political representatives.
A
In the wake of the Civil War, Congress enacted and the
States ratifed the Fifteenth Amendment, to ensure the en-
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franchisement of Black Americans. Nearly 200,000 Black
men
had fought in the Union cause: “[W]hen the fght is
over,” General Sherman counseled, “the hand that drops the
musket cannot be denied the ballot.” See A. Keyssar, The
Right to Vote 69 (rev. ed. 2009) (Keyssar). And millions
more African Americans had just become citizens, giving
them a claim on political rights. The Fifteenth Amendment
responded with a clarion promise of racial equality in voting:
“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.”
The Amendment's passage was a momentous occasion. It
appeared to affrm that a mere few years after slavery's end,
African Americans had become “equal members of the body
politic.” E. Foner, The Second Founding 111 (2019) (Foner).
President Grant, in a message to Congress, called the
Amendment “the most important event that has occurred
since the nation came to life.” Ibid. Black Americans simi-
larly referred to the Amendment as the Nation's “second
birth.” Ibid. At one of the many celebrations ratifcation
sparked, Frederick Douglass rejoiced that those just re-
leased from bondage were now “placed upon an equal footing
with all other men”: “Never,” he declared, “was revolution
more complete.” Keyssar 82; Foner 112.
But all the hosannas were many years premature: “In the
century that followed,” the Fifteenth Amendment “proved
little more than a parchment promise.” Allen, 599 U. S., at
10. Violence and intimidation were ever-present ways to
deny Black citizens their right to vote. But often force was
not needed, because state laws could well enough accomplish
that goal. Especially in the South, States soon put in place
a host of facially race-neutral devices to systematically disen-
franchise African American citizens. Poll taxes, literacy
tests, “good character” exams, property qualifcations, con-
voluted registration processes—all these and more, when
combined with administrative discretion, effectively sup-
pressed the Black vote, without much affecting the White
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one. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 311
(1966).
Congress could have acted: the Fifteenth Amend-
ment gave it the “power to enforce” minority voting rights
“by appropriate legislation.” But for decades it sat mute
while facially race-neutral voting rules succeeded in “render-
[ing] the right to vote illusory” for Black Americans. Allen,
599 U. S., at 10. Louisiana's post-Reconstruction rules, to
cite the most pertinent example, took less than a decade to
drive the number of Black registered voters from 130,000 (in
1896) to 1,342 (in 1904). See Keyssar 91. The numbers did
not begin to climb until the end of World War II (when Black
soldiers returned from other battlefelds), and even then only
slowly. See 1 U. S. Commission on Civil Rights Report 42
(1961).
Congress's initial efforts to counter voting discrimina-
tion—in the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964—did
little but prove the diffculty of the task. Each of those stat-
utes authorized the Attorney General “to seek injunctions
against public and private interference with the right to vote
on racial grounds.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 313. But
time and again, States found ways to evade the ensuing court
orders. They “merely switched to discriminatory devices
not covered by” the court decrees, fnding yet new race-
neutral rules (there seemed an endless number) that would
maintain the disparity between White and Black voting
power. Id., at 314. Congress thus learned of the “unremit-
ting and ingenious” methods States could use to resist Afri-
can American enfranchisement. Id., at 309. Protecting mi-
nority voting was like “battling the Hydra”: “Whenever one
form of voting discrimination was identifed and prohibited,
others sprang up in its place.” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at
560 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented Congress's
most determined effort to stop the cycle. Selma's Bloody
Sunday had galvanized the Nation to fnally confront racial
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Kagan, J., dissenting
ing use of a double-barreled approach to ensure the Fifteenth
Amendment'
s enforcement. Section 5 of the Act required
that States or localities with a history of racial voter sup-
pression obtain Department of Justice approval before im-
plementing new voting districts or rules. An administrative
review process thus would impede—at least, until this Court
in Shelby County stopped it—the ever-inventive efforts of
certain jurisdictions to deny or minimize minority voting.
Meantime, Section 2 provided judicial recourse for victims
of voting discrimination in all jurisdictions. That provision
prohibited any election rule or practice that would “deny or
abridge” the right to vote, thus imposing a “permanent, na-
tionwide ban on racial discrimination in voting ” (or so the
Court assured the country when disabling Section 5). 42
U. S. C. § 1973 (1970); Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 557.
Taken together, Congress thought, the two mechanisms
could “forever banish the blight of racial discrimination in
voting ”—effectively countering States' constantly morphing
methods of suppressing minority ballots. Allen, 599 U. S.,
at 10.
B
After the Act's passage—and partly because of its initial
success—those methods more and more focused on vote dilu-
tion. The Act led to a large increase in minority voting reg-
istration: In just fve years, almost as many African Ameri-
cans registered to vote in six Southern States as in the entire
century before 1965. See C. Davidson, The Voting Rights
Act, in Controversies in Minority Voting 21 (B. Grofman &
C. Davidson eds. 1992). And the Act mostly halted state
efforts to prevent those new voters from casting ballots at
all. So the States, as Congress noted when reauthorizing
Section 5 in 1975, “resorted to [measures] which would dilute
increasing minority voting strength.” City of Rome v.
United States, 446 U. S. 156, 181 (1980) (quoting H. R. Rep.
No. 94–196, pp. 10–11 (1975)). Efforts to minimize minori-
ties' voting power took several forms. One was to use at-
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large voting. A majority-White municipality, for example,
might
exclude all African Americans from its city council by
scrapping geographic districts in favor of citywide elections.
See Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 389 (1971). Another
common dilution mechanism was just to redraw single-
member districts. Minority citizens could be “packed”: A
racial community large enough to constitute a majority in
two normal districts—and therefore capable of electing two
representatives—might be crammed into a single district in-
stead. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 153–154
(1993). Or else minority citizens could be “cracked,” as in
the hypothetical introducing this opinion. See supra, at
127–128. Then, voters would be dispersed across multiple
districts so they could not muster a majority in any. See
Voinovich, 507 U. S., at 153. In either event, a minority citi-
zen's vote would “carry less weight than” it did previously
or than it would “in another, hypothetical district.” Gill v.
Whitford, 585 U. S. 48, 67 (2018).
This Court soon held, in White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755
(1973), that such practices could be unlawful because of
their effects—more specifcally, because they result in un-
equal electoral opportunities for minority citizens. (Attend
closely here, because White becomes the template for the
current version of Section 2.) The plaintiffs in White chal-
lenged a Texas districting scheme that established multi-
member districts in two counties with concentrated urban
populations, even while using single-member districts nearly
everywhere else. The effect of the scheme, the plaintiffs
charged, was to “minimize the voting strength of racial
groups”—both African Americans and Mexican Americans—
by putting them in a broad county-wide district in which
their votes would be swamped. Id., at 765, 767. In ad-
dressing that claim, the Court initially stated that it was “not
enough” to show that the districting scheme prevented the
minority groups from achieving proportional representa-
tion—legislative seats in proportion to their population.
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Id., at 765. But that did not mean that the plaintiffs had to
show
that the State had acted with discriminatory intent.
Rather, the Court held, the plaintiffs could prevail on a dif-
ferent kind of showing that a scheme's effect was to “mini-
mize the voting strength of racial groups.” Ibid. Under
the Court's test, there was unlawful vote dilution if “the po-
litical process[ ]” was “not equally open to participation” by
a racial group, so that “its members had less opportunity”
than others “to participate in the political processes and to
elect legislators of their choice.” Id., at 766.
The Court in White found that test satisfed under a “total-
ity of the circumstances” inquiry, which looked to how the
multi-member districting scheme operated when “overlaid”
on historical, social, and political “realities.” Id., at 769.
As part of that analysis, the Court noted the “history of off-
cial racial discrimination in Texas” and the persistent use of
“racial campaign tactics” in elections. Id., at 766–767. But
beyond such intentional race-based action, the Court looked
to how the current or “residual” effects of past discrimina-
tion, including disparities in matters like housing, “education
[and] employment,” had political consequences. Id., at 768.
Similarly, with respect to Mexican Americans, the Court con-
sidered evidence of “cultural and language barrier[s]” to po-
litical participation. Ibid. And fnally, the Court homed in
on political data itself, including voter registration and the
infrequent election of Black or Hispanic candidates in
majority-White districts. See id., at 766, 768–769. When
all those factors were combined—in what the Court called
“an intensely local appraisal”—the “impact” of the multi-
member districts clearly emerged: Those districts denied mi-
nority voters equal “access to the political process[ ],” “spe-
cifcally in the election of [state] representatives.” Id., at
767–769.
1
1
The majority's description of the White Court's “totality of the circum-
stances” analysis gives a false impression. According to the majority,
“the Court's rationale rested on evidence that gave rise to an obvious
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Just seven years later, however, the Court did an about-
face
, now requiring a showing of discriminatory intent to
succeed on a vote-dilution claim. In City of Mobile v. Bol-
den, the plaintiffs challenged an at-large election system for
a three-member city commission. Under that system, Mo-
bile's Black population, which made up 35% of the total, had
never managed to elect a candidate of its choice. But the
Court did not embark on the kind of analysis employed in
White to determine whether the system diluted Black votes.
Instead, the Court's controlling opinion held that Section 2
merely “restated the prohibitions” of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, which barred only intentional discrimination. 446
U. S., at 61 (plurality opinion); see id., at 62–65. And the
plaintiffs had produced no evidence of discriminatory motive.
They could, the Court noted (as though it were the end of
the matter), “register and vote without hindrance.” Id., at
65. That their chosen candidates happened to always lose
was beside the point. Because they could not show that the
city had “purposeful[ly] exclu[ded]” them “from participat-
i[ng] in the election process,” the Court held, they had no
viable Section 2 suit. Id., at 64 (emphasis added); see Allen,
599 U. S., at 11 (similarly describing Bolden).
inference” that the State acted with “discriminatory purpose or intent.”
Ante, at 96. That might be so of pieces of the evidence the Court relied
on—for example, the use of “racial campaign tactics” by a party-affliated
organization. Ante, at 97; 412 U. S., at 767. And it is of course true that
evidence of disparate impact can be of such magnitude (in this sphere as
in others) as to indicate illicit intent. But the Court was crystal clear
that its review of local conditions encompassed things “neither . . . im-
proper nor invidious.” Id., at 766. And indeed, its opinion reads more
like a fne-grained report on political and social conditions than (as the
majority would have it) a criminal bill of particulars. Most important
(and as even the majority admits), the Court never suggested that the
ultimate point of its analysis was to gauge the State's intent. Ante, at 96.
Rather, the point was just what the Court said: to decide whether Texas's
districting scheme in fact “operated to dilute [minorities'] voting
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Bolden, as the majority notes, triggered “an avalanche of
cr
iticism, both in the media and within the civil rights com-
munity.” Ante, at 95 (quoting Allen, 599 U. S., at 11). This
Court recently noted a few of the assessments. “[T]he big-
gest step backwards in civil rights” to come from the Court
since the Voting Rights Act's passage. Allen, 599 U. S., at
11 (quoting N. Y. Times, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A22). And a
“major defeat for blacks and other minorities fghting elec-
toral schemes that exclude them from offce.” Allen, 599
U. S., at 11–12 (quoting Washington Post, Apr. 23, 1980,
p. A5).
The problem, as even the majority recognizes, was “that
a focus on discriminatory intent, rather than discriminatory
effects, would defeat worthy claims because of the diffculty
of proving intentional discrimination.” Ante, at 95. It is
the rare legislature, as the history of voting discrimination
shows, that cannot camoufage racial targeting with race-
neutral justifcations. For that reason, Bolden brought
vote-dilution claims to a near-standstill. The Department of
Justice shelved the dilution cases it had intended to bring;
and private plaintiffs fled just 10 such suits in the next year,
compared with 60 the year before. See A. Berman, Give Us
the Ballot 135 (2015). States, it seemed, could make minor-
ity votes meaningless without ever running into the Voting
Rights Act.
But then Congress stepped in, to reverse Bolden's intent
requirement—and create the statute existing today. The
House began the process with a simple change to Section 2's
text. It replaced the words “to deny or abridge” with the
phrase “in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement
of,” to make the section look like this:
“No voting qualifcation or prerequisite to voting or
standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or ap-
plied by any State or political subdivision in a manner
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any citizen of the United States to vote on account of
race
or color.” § 10301(a) (emphasis added).
But a Senate subcommittee led by Senator Orrin Hatch ob-
jected. It thought the House's amendment would always re-
quire racially proportional representation, and advocated
keeping Section 2—as construed by Bolden—just as it was.
The impasse was resolved by Senator Bob Dole in the Judi-
ciary Committee, through the addition of a subsection codify-
ing the White decision. Recall that White had rejected pro-
portional representation as the standard for vote-dilution
claims. See supra, at 136–137. Now Senator Dole—while
retaining the House's “results in” language—added a provi-
sion to do the same thing. See § 10301(b) (“[N]othing in this
section establishes a right to have members of a [racial
group] elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the
population”). And yet more important for present pur-
poses, Senator Dole took language from White to clarify
when a State would violate the ban on electoral rules that
“result[ ] in a denial or abridgement” of voting. A violation is
established, the Dole (but really the White) language stated,
“if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown
that the political processes leading to nomination or elec-
tion in the State or political subdivision are not equally
open to participation by members of a [racial group] in
that its members have less opportunity than other mem-
bers of the electorate to participate in the political proc-
ess and to elect representatives of their choice.”
§ 10301(b).
That elaboration of when the effects of an electoral rule
would cause a violation of Section 2 received bipartisan sup-
port. The amended Section 2 passed both the House and
the Senate by huge majorities; and in June 1982, President
Reagan signed it into law.
An “oft-cited” Senate Report explained just what the 1982
amendment had accomplished: The new Section 2 repudiated
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Bolden's intent requirement and adopted White's “results
test.
” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 658; S. Rep. No. 97–417, p. 27
(1982) (Senate Report). An intent test, the Report stated,
imposed “an inordinately diffcult burden for plaintiffs.” Id.,
at 36. Even when state actors had purposefully discrimi-
nated, they would likely be “ab[le] to offer a non-racial ratio-
nalization,” supported by “a false trail” of “offcial resolu-
tions” and “other legislative history eschewing any racial
motive.” Id., at 37. The proof lay in what had happened
after Bolden, when even suits involving “egregious” vote di-
lution had failed. Senate Report, at 37; see id., at 26–27,
37–39. And in any event, the Report continued, the Bolden
intent test “ask[ed] the wrong question.” Senate Report, at
36. The right question was instead the one White—and now
the statute—asked: “whether minorities have equal access to
the process of electing their representatives.” Senate Re-
port, at 36. In applying the new Section 2, the Report in-
structed, courts should “assess the impact of the challenged”
practice based on “objective factors” to determine whether
it worked to “minimize or cancel out the voting strength and
political effectiveness of minority groups.” Id., at 27–28.
The Senate Report also noted this Court's holdings recog-
nizing Congress's constitutional authority to focus the Sec-
tion 2 standard on results. It is “hornbook law,” the Report
explained, that the Fifteenth Amendment “grant[s] Congress
broad power” to enact legislation “reasonably adapted to
protect citizens against the risk” that their constitutional
right to vote will be denied. Id., at 39–40 (citing Katzen-
bach, 383 U. S., at 326). So even though the Fifteenth
Amendment itself barred only intentional discrimination,
Congress could enact legislation extending to discriminatory
effects. Indeed, the Report observed, this Court had held
as much two years earlier, when it approved Section 5's
broad effects-based scope. Senate Report, at 40 (citing City
of Rome, 446 U. S. 156). In Section 2 as well, proper en-
forcement of the Fifteenth Amendment necessitated a re-
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sults test. For one thing, voting rules with “discriminatory
resu
lts perpetuate the effects of past purposeful discrimina-
tion.” Senate Report, at 40. And anyway, the Report
again emphasized, the diffculties of proving motive would
“create a substantial risk that intentional discrimination”
would go “undetected, uncorrected and undeterred.” Ibid.
So Congress made a choice that was “as considered as con-
sidered comes”: to ensure that “results alone could lead to
liability” under Section 2. Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 703
(Kagan, J., dissenting). Congress in 1982 knew all about
this Nation's history of racially discriminatory voting prac-
tices. It knew that even when States could no longer deny
ballots to minority citizens, they might still try to give their
votes no or minimal weight. And Congress knew that those
efforts did not come tagged as race-based. To the contrary,
they were race-neutral on their face, and likewise were pub-
licly backed by race-neutral justifcations. So Congress re-
nounced, as strongly as it could, Bolden's decision to limit
Section 2's ban to intentional discrimination. It made sure
instead, as this Court recently explained, that Section 2
would “turn[ ] on the presence of discriminatory effects.”
Allen, 599 U. S., at 25; see id., at 44 (Kavanaugh, J., concur-
ring in part) (“[T]he text of § 2 establishes an effects test,
not an intent test”). And more precisely, that the section
would turn on whether, given all relevant circumstances, an
electoral rule would leave minority voters with “less oppor-
tunity” than non-minority voters to “elect representatives of
their choice.” § 10301(b).
There is a way to decide this case consistent with that
fully permissible congressional choice, and a way not. In
the next part, I show how 40 years' worth of this Court's
caselaw would address the vote-dilution claim involved here.
After that, I address what today's majority does.
2
2
A wrinkle here is that the suit directly before us involves a claim of
racial gerrymandering under the Fourteenth Amendment, not of vote dilu-
tion under Section 2. See ante, at 106–107. (As I will later discuss, the
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II
Th
is Court frst construed the amended Section 2 in
Thornburg v. Gingles, establishing there a framework—like
the new statute itself—based on White. That framework
has governed vote-dilution claims for the last four decades.
And indeed, just three years ago, in Allen, we unequivocally
reaffrmed it when sustaining a vote-dilution challenge to an
Alabama redistricting scheme. See 599 U. S., at 19–23.
Had we proceeded along the same road today, we would have
treated the vote-dilution challenge to Louisiana's scheme in
the same way.
“Gingles began,” as Allen recently noted, “by describing
what § 2 guards against.” 599 U. S., at 17. “The essence of
a § 2 claim,” Gingles explained, is that an electoral rule or
practice “interacts with social and historical conditions,”
generally caused by past intentional discrimination, “to
cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and
white voters.” 478 U. S., at 47. Such an inequality exists
when the challenged rule “operates to minimize or cancel out
[minority voters'] ability to elect their preferred candidates.”
Id., at 48. And the risk of that “minimiz[ation]”—or dilu-
tion—is greatest when “minority and majority voters con-
sistently prefer different candidates” and the minority voters
are submerged in a majority voting population that “regu-
elements of the two have always been poles apart—with a dilution claim
turning on an election rule's effects and a gerrymandering claim turning
on its purpose. See in fra, at 151–153, and n. 6). But this gerrymander-
ing suit arose out of a prior dilution suit's success: The plaintiffs here
attack the districting plan that Louisiana devised to remedy the vote di-
lution previously found. See ante, at 101–107. And the majority chooses
to resolve this suit by focusing on the earlier one—holding that the plain-
tiffs here succeed because the court in the earlier litigation did not apply
the majority's brand-new understanding of Section 2. See ante, at 122–
125. So I too focus on how to decide a vote-dilution claim under Sec-
tion 2, and do not address other issues implicated in a gerrymandering
suit.
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larly defeat[s] [their] choices.” Ibid.; see Allen, 599 U. S.,
at
17–18.
3
To get at that issue, Gingles initially requires a Section 2
plaintiff asserting vote dilution to satisfy three “precondi-
tions.” 478 U. S., at 50. First, the minority group allegedly
harmed must be “suffciently large and geographically com-
pact to constitute a majority in a reasonably confgured dis-
trict”—meaning, one “comport[ing] with traditional district-
ing criteria.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 18 (alteration omitted).
Second, the identifed minority group must be “politically co-
hesive,” meaning that its members mainly vote for the same
parties or candidates. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. And third,
the majority in the district must “vote[ ] suffciently as a bloc
to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority's preferred
candidate.” Ibid. Those three factors, taken together,
serve a gatekeeping function. They permit a vote-dilution
suit to proceed only if a plaintiff can show that minority vot-
ers would elect a “representative of [their] own choice” in
some reasonably drawn electoral district, but that racially
polarized voting in the district as actually drawn will usually
“impede[ ] [their] ability” to do so. Allen, 599 U. S., at 18;
Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51.
3
The majority, in describing the legal background to this case, briefy
criticizes our Gingles opinion for spending too little time with Section 2's
text and too much with the Senate Judiciary Committee Report. See
ante, at 98. The author of today's decision made the same point in
Allen—in his then-dissenting opinion. See 599 U. S., at 103 (opinion of
Alito, J.). But the erstwhile majority there rejected the argument, ex-
plaining that, whatever changes have occurred in statutory interpretation,
“Gingles effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that § 2 embodies.”
Id., at 39, n. 10. It does so, as will soon become evident, by grounding its
framework in Section 2's ban on electoral rules that, in all the circum-
stances, “result[ ] in” giving minority voters a “less[er] opportunity” than
others to “elect representatives of their choice.” § 10301. And it does
so, too, by relying on (indeed, partly copying) this Court's analysis in
White—which was the indisputable basis for Senator Dole's textual com-
promise. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 12–13; supra, at 140.
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That threshold test is not easily met. To satisfy the frst
fac
tor, a plaintiff will have to suggest alternative districting
plans complying with such traditional criteria as compact-
ness, contiguity, and respect for geographic boundaries and
political subdivisions. And as Allen recently described, the
inability to offer such substitute maps has doomed a good
many vote-dilution suits. See 599 U. S., at 27–29 (citing
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993); Miller v. Johnson, 515
U. S. 900 (1995); Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952 (1996); Abbott v.
Perez, 585 U. S. 579 (2018)). Similarly, to satisfy the second
and third conditions, the plaintiff must show the existence of
racially polarized voting, generally through “statistical evi-
dence of historic voting patterns.” League of United Latin
American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 500 (2006) (Rob-
erts, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). It is
never enough in a Section 2 suit to rely on “assumptions”
about how individuals will “vote based on their ethnic [or
racial] background.” Ibid. Instead, “plaintiffs must prove”
racial bloc voting. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 46. Given those
requirements—and the steady decline in both residential
segregation and racially polarized voting, which make them
harder to meet—only strong vote-dilution claims can today
get out of the gate. See Brief for Ellen D. Katz et al. as
Amici Curiae 7–8 (Katz Brief ); Allen, 599 U. S., at 26–29;
infra, at 169.
And beyond Gingles's preconditions lies the “totality of
circumstances” inquiry that migrated from White to Section
2's text. § 10301( b); see supra, at 140. To find, under
that test, that the political process is not “equally open” to
minority voters, a court must make (so Gingles held, lifting
from White) “an intensely local appraisal” of how the chal-
lenged electoral rule operates against the backdrop of “past
and present [racial] realit[ies].” § 10301(b); Gingles, 478
U. S., at 79; see White, 412 U. S., at 769. The “objective fac-
tors” to be considered include the State's “history of voting-
related discrimination,” its experience of “racial appeals in
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political campaigns,” and its track record of electing minority
citi
zens to offce. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 44–45; see White,
412 U. S., at 769; Senate Report, at 28–29. So too, the in-
quiry may involve appraising the “effects of past discrimina-
tion” on economic and social conditions that “hinder [minor-
ity citizens'] ability to participate effectively in the political
process.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 45; see White, 412 U. S., at
768. Equally, though, the totality test weighs the strength
of a “State's interest in maintaining ” a given electoral prac-
tice. Houston Lawyers' Assn. v. Attorney General of Tex.,
501 U. S. 419, 426 (1991). And the variety of matters to be
assessed does nothing to detract from the test's bite. By
digging deep into local context, the totality inquiry imple-
ments Congress's directive that a simple lack of proportional
representation cannot make out a Section 2 claim. See Allen,
599 U. S., at 26–30. And when superimposed on Gingles's
threshold conditions, the test ensures that Section 2 will work
as intended: to limit liability to cases where electoral rules in
fact “deny minority voters equal opportunity” in the political
process. Allen, 599 U. S., at 30 (alteration omitted).
Understood in that way, Allen explained just three years
ago, “Gingles has governed our Voting Rights Act jurispru-
dence since it was decided.” Id., at 19. More: “Congress
has never disturbed our understanding of § 2 as Gingles con-
strued it.” Ibid. And more: “[W]e have applied Gingles in
one § 2 case after another, to different kinds of electoral sys-
tems and to different jurisdictions in States all over the
country.” Ibid. (citing no fewer than 10 Supreme Court de-
cisions). And yes, still more, this time invoking “stare deci-
sis”: “[W]e decline to adopt an interpretation of § 2 that
would revise and reformulate” the Gingles framework “that
has been the baseline of our § 2 jurisprudence for nearly
forty years.” 599 U. S., at 26, and n. 3. One might even
have thought the matter settled. But see ante, at 91–126.
4
4
The majority's view that Allen “did not address the central issue here,”
ante, at 121—the meaning of Section 2 and appropriate content of the Ging-
les framework—is one of the more perplexing aspects of today's deci-
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In that settled view, a paradigmatic case of a Section 2
v
iolation is the cracked-circle hypothetical opening this dis-
sent. See supra, at 127–128. If you refresh your memory,
you'll instantly see why. The Black electorate could form—
indeed, did form—a reasonably confgured district: The circle
in the middle of the State complies with traditional district-
ing criteria of contiguity, compactness, and respect for politi-
cal subdivisions. So Gingles's frst precondition is met.
And the racially polarized voting in the State ensures that
the second and third are met as well. The Black electorate
within the circle and the White population surrounding it
vote as blocs and for different candidates. So when the
Black voters are dispersed among six predominantly White
districts, they lose all their electoral infuence. Or, as we
recently described such a situation: Black voters have “the
potential to elect a representative of [their] own choice in a
possible district,” but “racially polarized voting prevents
[them] from doing so in the district as actually drawn because
[they are] submerged in a larger white voting population.”
Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 302 (2017) (alteration omit-
ted). That means a Section 2 suit will be decided based on
the totality of the circumstances. And, as to that, I have
posited facts making the inquiry straightforward: Recall that
the hypothetical State has a long history of racial discrimina-
tion, which continues to show up, in manifold ways, in social
conditions and political activity. So Section 2 (before today)
would have stopped the hypothesized cracking plan and, in
sion. I will have more to say about that assertion below, see in fra, at
160–163, 165, n. 11, but for now, I invite readers to do a bit of exploration
on their own. Just search for every quotation from Allen in this opin-
ion—in this paragraph of course, but all the rest too—and ask yourself
whether it is credible that Allen “did not address” the question of “our
understanding of § 2 as Gingles construed it.” Ante, at 121; Allen, 599
U. S., at 19. Better yet, go read all of Allen. You will fnd that, on page
after page, it discusses precisely that issue—and offers a reading of Sec-
tion 2 and Gingles perfectly consonant with this dissent, and fundamen-
tally at odds with today's majority opinion. See, e. g., Allen, 599 U. S., at
11–14, 17–19, 24–30, 37–38, 39, 41; id., at 30–33 (plurality opinion).
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so doing, worked as Congress intended—to give Black voters
no
less a chance than their White neighbors to participate
i n the pol itica l process and elec t their preferred
representatives.
And my hypothetical is not so different from the Louisiana
districting scheme that was challenged in the dilution suit
underlying this case. It is just that instead of arguing about
the need for one majority-minority district, the plaintiffs in
that suit were asserting the need for a second. As the ma-
jority relates, Louisiana drew its post-2020 census map with
one mainly Black district and fve mainly White ones. See
ante, at 101–102. (For context, Louisiana's population is
about one-third African American.) The dilution plaintiffs
alleged that there was another natural (i. e., politically cohe-
sive and geographically contiguous) Black-majority district
which the Louisiana Legislature had effectively cracked.
See ante, at 105 (showing the plaintiffs' proposed district).
The residents of that possible district wound up dispersed
among the State's other districts, where (given racially po-
larized voting) their preferences would count for nothing.
According to the plaintiffs, that plan violated Section 2 by
giving Black voters less opportunity than their White coun-
terparts to elect representatives of their choice.
Based on a voluminous record, including mountains of sta-
tistical data and fve days of testimony, the District Court
found that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail. See Robin-
son v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759, 766 (MD La. 2022). Their
proposed second district—in which Black voters could “eas-
ily” form a majority—was reasonably confgured according
to traditional districting criteria. Id., at 821; see id., at 827–
831. And without that district, Black voters' choices would
be swamped: The evidence showed that as few as 12% of
White voters in Louisiana would support Black-preferred
candidates in statewide contests. Id., at 841–842. With the
Gingles preconditions thus satisfed, the court assessed the
totality of the circumstances and found that it, too, supported
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Kagan, J., dissenting
relief. See, e. g., 605 F. Supp. 3d, at 845 (recounting, among
other
things, the State's long history of racial discrimination,
including that “Louisiana has never had a Black Congress-
person elected from a non-majority-Black district”). And so
the court ordered the State to draw a new map.
The court thus applied, in an altogether unexceptionable
way, the framework used for the last 40 years to evaluate
Section 2 vote-dilution claims. The court followed Gingles,
along with the two fstfuls of this Court's decisions affrming
its framework. See supra, at 146. And most crucially, the
court followed Section 2 itself, because all our prior decisions
faithfully implemented the fundamental choice Congress
made in amending that section: to make liability turn (as the
Court did in White) not on the motives behind but on the
“results” of an electoral practice like districting.
III
The majority today does just the opposite. Under the
guise of “updat[ing]” the Gingles framework, ante, at 116,
118, 122, the majority transforms it—and in so doing, betrays
Congress's choice. At each of Gingles's steps, the majority
imposes new proof requirements, serving a common objec-
tive: to convert an effects test, as commanded by Congress,
into a purpose test, as preferred by this Court. Nearly half
a century ago, Congress amended Section 2 to repudiate Bol-
den's limitation of that provision's reach to intentional dis-
crimination. See supra, at 139–142. Today's decision re-
turns Section 2 to what it was under Bolden. Now, as then,
vote-dilution plaintiffs will have to show more than vote dilu-
tion: They will have to show, as well, race-based motive.
Now, as then, that requirement will make success in their
suits nearly impossible, even if an electoral practice has in
fact “minimize[d] or cancel[ed] out” minority citizens' “voting
strength.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 25 (quoting Gingles, 478
U. S., at 47). It is as if Congress had never amended Section
2. I frst show how that is the consequence of today's “up-
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dating ”; I then address how the majority attempts to justify
what
it has done. The upshot is that the majority, without
any good reason, has overturned Congress's studied determi-
nation—along with this Court's precedents upholding it—
about how to rectify racial inequalities in electoral politics.
A
Let's frst drop the majority's misleading label. What the
majority gives us today is not an “updated Gingles frame-
work.” Ante, at 122. It is its own thing, deserving of its
own name. Maybe the Callais contrivance? Or if that
seems too immediately pejorative, just say that what the ma-
jority does today is to impose the Callais requirements.
At their base, all those requirements have the same func-
tion: They force a vote-dilution plaintiff to prove that a State
adopted an election rule with racially discriminatory intent.
On the majority's view, a rule diluting minority votes—even
making them count for nothing—poses no problem if moti-
vated by “nonracial factors.” Ante, at 114. So a State has
free rein to “use traditional districting factors” even when
they minimize or cancel out minority votes. Ibid. And yet
more practically important, a State may (so says the major-
ity) draw districts for any political purpose, including for a
purely “partisan purpose[ ]”—that is, to increase one party's
electoral strength—no matter their racial effects. Ante, at
115. For that reason, the majority insists, a Section 2 plain-
tiff has “a special burden to overcome.” Ibid. (quoting Alex-
ander v. South Carolina State Conference of NAACP,
602 U. S. 1, 9 (2024) and Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308). The
plaintiff “must disentangle race from politics by proving that
the former drove a district's lines.” Ante, at 115 (quoting
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9, and Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308; em-
phasis deleted). In other words, he must show that the
State, in drawing that district, had not a political but instead
a racial motivation—that it acted for the specifc purpose of
weakening a minority group's voting infuence. The new
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Callais requirements, as I'll soon discuss, are all (concededly)
desig
ned to ensure that the plaintiff is held to that “special
burden”—which, as the Congress amending Section 2 well
understood, is nearly insuperable.
5
But before becoming so granular, it is worth asking what
precedents support the majority's insistence on evidence of
racially discriminatory intent. By now, I hope, no reader
will think those precedents concern Section 2. Our Section
2 precedents are quite to the contrary: It is “patently clear,”
Allen recently summarized, that because Section 2 liability
5
In responding to this dissent, the majority (on its opinion's penultimate
page) appears to disclaim this reading. The majority notes frst (and this
is true enough) that “the dissent states over and over again that our deci-
sion requires a § 2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent.” Ante, at 125.
And then the majority's response: No, a vote-dilution plaintiff need show
only that a redistricting “denies members of a racial group the same `op-
portunity' as other voters to elect the candidates they prefer.” Ibid.
That formulation is right, and as shown above, it demands an inquiry into
the effects of a scheme on voters' opportunity to elect candidates. See
supra, at 140, 143–148. Similarly, the majority claims that it is doing just
what White did. See ante, at 125. And White, recall, made an “intensely
local appraisal” of whether an electoral scheme, when “overlaid” on histori-
cal, social, and political “realities,” in fact operated to dilute minority vot-
ing strength—in other words, applied an effects test. See supra, at 136–
138, and n. 1. So the majority closes its opinion by suggesting it is not
requiring a vote-dilution plaintiff to present evidence of “discriminatory
intent.” Ante, at 125. Which, if true, would be welcome news. And
welcomer still if lower courts took those last words seriously and allowed
Section 2 claims to succeed even absent proof of race-based purpose. But
I suspect they will not. Because they, like I, will have read the many
pages leading up to the majority's coda. And those pages, both in setting
out and in explaining the Callais requirements, make clear that a Section
2 plaintiff has a “special burden” to “demonstrate” that racial rather than
political (or other) reasons “drove a district's lines”—i. e., that “the State
intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity.”
Ante, at 115–116, 119 (emphasis added). So what the majority hopes to
accomplish by its last-minute attempt to associate itself with an effects
inquiry is something of a mystery. To try to disguise what it is really
doing? To somehow absolve itself of responsibility? Or could it just be
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“turns on the presence of discriminatory effects, not discrim-
i
natory intent,” a plaintiff need not demonstrate a “purpose
of racial discrimination.” 599 U. S., at 25 (quoting Gingles,
478 U. S., at 71, n. 34). So the majority must go further
afeld. Its citations regarding the plaintiff 's “special bur-
den” of showing that race rather than politics (or anything
else) motivated the State are from this Court's racial-gerry-
mandering jurisprudence. See ante, at 115 (citing Alexan-
der and Cooper). But racial gerrymandering claims and
vote-dilution claims are, despite some superfcial similarities,
different legal beasts. Contra, ante, at 125–126 (confusing
and confating the two). Plaintiffs bringing the former need
not have suffered vote dilution, nor do they invoke Section 2.
Their claim is simply that purposeful racial sorting—all on its
own, irrespective of any vote-minimizing effects—violates
the Fourteenth Amendment.
6
In such a case (as I have else-
where explained), it is of course essential to have proof of
race-based purpose. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at 291–292, 308.
But not so when the claim is for vote dilution, brought under
a statute that (in Allen's words again) “clearly rejected
treating discriminatory intent as a requirement for liability.”
599 U. S., at 37. In that context, putting a burden on the
plaintiff to show that district lines were “driven by” racial
rather than political (or other) factors, ante, at 119, is to reject
6
The frst case to recognize a racial gerrymandering claim was Shaw v.
Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993). There, fve White residents objected to the
North Carolina Legislature's decision to create two majority-Black dis-
tricts. But the plaintiffs did not—and could not—argue that the map
diluted their votes. See id., at 641. Instead, they contended that the
legislature's “deliberate [race-based] segregation of voters” violated their
Fourteenth Amendment right to “a color-blind electoral process.” Id., at
641–642. The Court held that the plaintiffs had a “cognizable claim”—
that the Fourteenth Amendment could be violated by such intentional
sorting. Id., at 634. And later decisions elaborated that a racial gerry-
mandering claim would trigger strict scrutiny if a plaintiff “prove[d] that
race was the predominant factor motivating ” the drawing of district lines.
Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 291 (2017).

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everything this Court has ever said about Congress's Section
2
choice.
The majority's misplaced focus on purpose shows up frst,
and most critically, in its recasting of the frst Gingles pre-
condition. That threshold requirement, as the majority ac-
knowledges, has always functioned to ensure that a minority
community is large and geographically compact enough to
elect a representative of its choice in a reasonably confgured
district. See ante, at 98, 118–119; supra, at 144–145. So
the illustrative maps most vote-dilution plaintiffs submit
show exactly that—how a reasonable majority-minority dis-
trict could be created. But now, the majority says, the frst
precondition must be devoted to fushing out discriminatory
purpose on the part of the State, by excluding the possibility
that its districting plan arose from nonracial motives. See
ante, at 119. So the plaintiffs' alternative maps have to sat-
isfy (as well or better than the State's own) every permissi-
ble districting criterion the State specifes, including—and
this is the kicker—all its “political goals.” Ibid. Those
goals include the “partisan distribution” of districts within
the State—say, that six seats should be held by one party
and none by the other. Ibid. Likewise, they apparently
encompass the partisan balance within any district—say, to
ensure “a specifc margin of victory” for a candidate. Ibid.
Only if the plaintiffs' maps “achieve [all those] goals just as
well” as the State's plan, the majority intones, can those
maps “help to `disentangle race' from politics”—or, otherwise
said, show that the State's plan was “driven by racial” mo-
tives. Ibid. (quoting again Alexander, 602 U. S., at 6—a ra-
cial gerrymandering, not Section 2 dilution, case).
That change alone is likely to bring vote-dilution suits (al-
ready hard to win) to a screeching halt. To see how, return
to the circle hypothetical—until now, the paradigmatic case
of vote dilution, because the State there prevents Black (but
not White) voters from having an opportunity to elect their
preferred representative, as Section 2 demands. See supra,
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at 127–128. The legislature, recall, has sliced the majority-
Black
circle district into six pie pieces, with each added to
(and only marginally affecting) a predominantly-White dis-
trict. Before today, the frst Gingles precondition is met
with ease, just with a picture of the old district: Yes, that
picture would say, Black voters can form—in fact, have
formed—a majority in a district drawn consistent with tradi-
tional principles. See supra, at 147. But after today?
Suppose the State, per the majority's instructions, asserts
that it cracked the African American electorate because it
wants six safe Republican districts. Now the plaintiffs' il-
lustrative map, insists the majority, must also have six safe
Republican districts. But given that race and partisan pref-
erence are linked (with Black citizens mainly voting Demo-
cratic), such a map cannot be drawn. Any map with a
majority-Black district will not be a map with all Republican
seats. And so, the majority decides, a Section 2 suit must
fail at the outset—even though the State has deprived Black
citizens of any opportunity to elect representatives of their
choice. At least where such common race-based voting
patterns hold, States now have an automatic political-
gerrymandering defense to vote-dilution claims.
Yet more, the majority's reworking of Gingles's frst pre-
condition (contra its assurance) will doom vote-dilution suits
even when majority and minority voters support different
candidates within a single party. Take an example offered
by the Solicitor General, whose ideas about how to upend
Gingles the majority largely flches. See Brief for United
States as Amicus Curiae 20–31. In that hypothetical,
Black, Hispanic, and White voters residing in Harlem all
vote mainly for Democrats, but have “different candidates of
choice.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 119. The Solicitor General main-
tains that if the district lines “favor[ ] one of those racial
groups”—let's say, the Black voters—“that's the sort of situ-
ation where Section 2 could come in.” Ibid. The majority
agrees, because there the State's preference for one party
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could not explain the district lines drawn. See ante, at 117,
119.
But under the majority's test, the legislature could
easily invoke other political, as well as non-political, goals to
justify the lines and thus preclude liability. Suppose the
State asserted that it drew the lines to protect an incumbent,
who just so happened to be favored by Black residents. Or
suppose the State said it wanted to increase (or decrease or
maintain) the district's partisan competitiveness (created by
its ratio of Democrats to Republicans), which just coinciden-
tally gave Black voters more infuence. Or suppose the
State said that it wished to keep the existing district's core
intact (itself a frequent districting criterion, see ante, at
114), rather than make the changes needed to give non-Black
voters greater electoral opportunity. The possibilities are
endless. And each would have the same result. Because a
Section 2 plaintiff's map could not as well advance the be-
spoke political (or other) goal(s) favoring the Black voters'
chosen candidate, the suit would fail—even if non-Black
votes, election year in and election year out, had been made
to count for nothing.
Congress, as should by now be clear, made a different
choice. In amending Section 2, Congress opted for the ef-
fects test of White over the purpose test of Bolden. See
supra, at 139–142. And it did so largely because of the unfea-
sibility of countering a State's non-race-based justifcation for
a given districting decision. See supra, at 140–142. Such a
demand, the authors of the Senate compromise explained,
would impose “an inordinately diffcult burden,” precluding a
remedy for even the most “egregious” cases of vote dilution.
Senate Report, at 36–37. Yet that is exactly the burden the
majority makes Section 2 plaintiffs bear—and at the frst
threshold condition. The majority makes no effort to ex-
plain how minority voters can meet its new requirement.
How they can devise a map satisfying (at least as well as the
State's own) each of the State's asserted political and other
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district.
7
Or
assuming they cannot draw such a map,
whether they may produce other evidence of racially dis-
criminatory motive to meet (or else bypass) the frst Callais
requirement. Or if they may offer such evidence, how (if at
all) it might differ from the kind generally needed to prevail
in a racial gerrymandering suit—i. e., “direct evidence,” like
“leaked e-mails” from legislators professing the desire to re-
duce a racial group's voting strength. Alexander, 602 U. S.,
at 8. Presumably, the majority thinks that the details do
not much matter. Once Section 2 has been transformed, via
a change to Gingles's frst precondition, from a ban on ra-
cially dilutive effects (à la White) to a ban on race-based mo-
tives (à la Bolden), virtually all vote-dilution cases will fail
anyway. The majority has thus nullifed Congress's decision
to provide a remedy, without proof of intent, for state action
that “results in” a minority group's lesser opportunity “to
elect representatives.” § 10301.
But the majority is not yet done thwarting Congress's ob-
jective. Maybe in some exceptional case, a State will fail to
7
If that assignment does not sound fanciful enough, the majority im-
poses yet a weirder requirement on plaintiffs' maps—and one Allen spe-
cifcally rejected. “[I]n drawing illustrative maps,” today's majority
holds, “plaintiffs cannot use race.” Ante, at 119; see ibid. (“[A]n illustra-
tive map in which race was used has no value in proving a § 2 plaintiff 's
case”). What exactly the majority means by “use” is left unclear. But
assuming the majority means to bar plaintiffs from taking account of race
when showing how a majority-minority district could be created, it is both
incoherent and inconsistent with Section 2 and Gingles. I cannot do bet-
ter than Allen did in explaining why. In that case, Alabama took much the
same view the majority does: that a Section 2 plaintiff 's illustrative maps
“cannot have been `based' on race.” 599 U. S., at 24. But Allen spurned
the notion. “Section 2 itself demands consideration of race,” we explained,
because its implementation requires knowing “whether additional majority-
minority districts can be drawn.” Id., at 30–31 (emphasis in original).
And indeed, we continued, “[t]hat is the whole point” of the maps “adduced
at the frst step of Gingles.” Id., at 33 (emphasis deleted). To say that
those maps must be “race-blind” is thus to “reject [the Gingles] framework
outright”—really, to insist that it “be overruled.” Ibid. Quite right.

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assert a goal, like political gerrymandering, that the plain-
ti
ff 's map cannot replicate. Then, the majority's makeover
of the second and third Gingles preconditions comes into
play, again to convert Section 2 into its opposite—a statute
turning on discriminatory intent, not effects. Contra, Allen,
599 U. S., at 25 (Ҥ 2 turns on the presence of discriminatory
effects, not discriminatory intent”). Until today, the second
and third preconditions focused simply on racially polarized
voting: Plaintiffs had to show that minority citizens vote co-
hesively, but cannot elect their preferred candidates because
majority citizens vote as a bloc for others. See supra, at
144–145. Now the majority introduces a new requirement
to impede Section 2 suits: “[T]he plaintiffs must provide an
analysis that controls for party affliation.” Ante, at 119–
120. That means if minority citizens vote mainly for one
party and majority citizens vote mainly for another, none of
that difference can count toward meeting the second and
third preconditions. So in offering evidence of polarized
voting preferences, a plaintiff must remove from the equa-
tion . . . polarized voting preferences. For in most places
(even if not in Harlem), partisan difference is the way those
divergent preferences are expressed—and the way one racial
group's vote can swamp another's, again and again. The ma-
jority argues that its new requirement is needed to rule out
the possibility that the State districted as it did for partisan,
rather than racial, reasons. See ibid. But the State's in-
tent is not what is supposed to matter in a Section 2 suit.
Congress amended Section 2 (need I say again?) to ensure
that it would function as an effects test. The majority
wishes a different statute, and makes it so.
8
8
As with the frst Callais requirement, see supra, at 155–156, the major-
ity does not address whether plaintiffs can bypass this second requirement
if they have evidence that the districting decision was “driven by racial
considerations,” ante, at 119. In other words, what happens if the second
Callais requirement is unsatisfed (because race and partisan preference
go hand in hand) but there is still evidence that race “drove” the “district's
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And so too for Section 2's “totality of circumstances” in-
quiry
. § 10301(b). Should some litigant miraculously arrive
at that stage of a vote-dilution suit, he will fnd it trans-
formed. The “totality” test, today's majority insists, must
focus on only one thing: “intentional present-day voting dis-
crimination.” Ante, at 121. But that is neither what Con-
gress said nor what Congress meant when it added the
phrase “totality of circumstances”—obviously referring to
multiple things—to Section 2. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 26 (A
“single-minded” concentration on “only one circumstance[ ]”
“cannot be squared with [Section 2's] demand”). Derived
from White, that phrase demands the kind of “intensely local
appraisal” the Court there used to evaluate a districting
plan's “impact” on a minority group's access to the political
process. 412 U. S., at 769–770. That appraisal of course in-
cluded evidence relating to “intentional present-day voting
discrimination.” Ante, at 121. But it included as well the
continuing effects of past discrimination—and not only in
politics but in other spheres of life. See White, 412 U. S.,
at 767–769; supra, at 137. The majority's fattening of the
prescribed inquiry mirrors Bolden's conversion of White into
a test for illicit motive. See supra, at 138. But it was pre-
cisely to reverse that shift that Congress enacted Section 2's
current “totality” language.
The consequences of the new Callais requirements show
up immediately, in the majority's disposition of this case.
The District Court may have heard fve days of testimony;
may have properly applied the (old) Gingles factors; may
have explained in 110 fact-intensive pages why the vote-
dilution plaintiffs were likely to prevail. See supra, at 148–
149. But the majority thinks it “eas[y]” to overturn all that
court's work in a few paragraphs. Ante, at 122. The plain-
tiffs funked the (new) frst Gingles precondition because
their illustrative map, although showing a reasonably con-
lines”? Ante, at 115, 126. Presumably the claim should be able to pro-
ceed to the “totality” test, but the majority leaves us guessing.
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fgured majority-minority district, “fail[ed] to meet the
St
ate's political goal[ ]” of protecting every incumbent Re-
publican representative. Ante, at 123. The plaintiffs came
up short on the (new) second and third preconditions because
their showing of racially polarized voting—“that black and
white voters consistently supported different candidates”—
“did not control for partisan preferences.” Ante, at 123–124.
And anyway, the plaintiffs could not prevail under the (new)
“totality of circumstances” test because they did not show
“that the State's challenged map was the result of intentional
racial discrimination”; all the plaintiffs' evidence—like the
dearth of Black-preferred candidates ever elected in the
State—could just be the result of “politics.” Ante, at 124.
Bang, bang, bang. It is like shooting fsh in a barrel. Once
the State can rely on any political goal of its devising—and
once “inter-party racial polarization” serves to “undercut”
rather than “strengthen[ ]” a vote-dilution claim—no plausi-
bly existing evidence in this case could have made a differ-
ence. Ante, at 120, 124 (emphasis deleted).
And nothing is special about this majority-minority dis-
trict; as the Callais requirements have eliminated it today,
so they will eliminate other and older ones in the years to
come. Recall that this majority-Black district (which is Dis-
trict 6) was Louisiana's second. See supra, at 148. The
State's District 2 has had a Black majority since 1983, when
a vote-dilution suit forced its creation. If Louisiana were
tomorrow to slice up District 2, dispersing its Black residents
among the rest, it is hard to see how the now judicially
amended Section 2 could stand in the way. The State pre-
sumably would assert as its “political goal” an all-Republican
congressional delegation; in other words, it would announce
a partisan gerrymander. Ante, at 115, 123. And because of
the severe racial polarization in the State, that goal would
be incompatible with maintaining District 2 as is. So those
advocating for its majority-minority composition would al-
most surely lose at the frst Callais requirement (and, as
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above, at the others as well). Repeated often enough across
the
country, the same districting practice—really, hinging
only on the partisan ambitions (or restraint) of state legisla-
tures—could destroy most of the majority-minority districts
that in the past 40 years the Voting Rights Act created.
The Callais requirements have thus laid the groundwork for
the largest reduction in minority representation since the
era following Reconstruction. Under cover of “updat[ing]”
and “realign[ing]” this greatest of statutes, ante, at 118, the
majority makes a nullity of Section 2 and threatens a half-
century's worth of gains in voting equality.
B
There is only one “special burden” appropriate to deciding
this case. Ante, at 115. And it is not the utterly novel one
that the majority imposes on Section 2 vote-dilution plain-
tiffs to “disentangle” state motives. Ibid. Rather, it is the
well-settled one that the Court itself must meet before over-
turning precedent about the meaning of a statute. Our law
is clear. Stare decisis—the presumption that “today's Court
should stand by yesterday's decisions”—“carries enhanced
force” when the decision in question “interprets a statute.”
Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455–
456 (2015). That is because our statutory, unlike our consti-
tutional, rulings can always be changed by Congress itself.
See id., at 456. (Just recall how Congress rejected our deci-
sion in Bolden.) When this Court has said what a statute
means—and Congress has said nothing to the contrary—a
“superpowered form of stare decisis” takes hold, which only
a “superspecial justifcation” can overcome. 576 U. S., at
458. Or, as one Justice has put it, there is in that circum-
stance a “nearly impregnable . . . shield” protecting the deci-
sion. Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc., 594 U. S. 559,
579 (2021) (Alito, J., dissenting).
This Court, as noted above, invoked that shield to uphold
G ingl es just three Ter ms ago. See sup ra, at 146. In
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Allen, Alabama proposed a way of limiting Gingles to make
it
harder to win a vote-dilution suit. We responded that
“Congress is undoubtedly aware” of how this Court has con-
strued Section 2. 599 U. S., at 39. And, we said, “[i]t can
change that if it likes.” Ibid. “But until and unless it does,
statutory stare decisis counsels our staying the course.”
Ibid. (citing Kimble, 576 U. S., at 456); see also 599 U. S., at
42, 43, n. 1 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part) (invoking
“stringent statutory stare decisis” rules and noting that “[i]n
the past 37 years” Congress “ha[s] not disturbed Gingles”).
And if that's not enough (though why not?), then there's this.
Justice Alito dissented in Allen in a way that prefgured
today's opinion, proposing there that the Gingles framework
be changed to refect his own views about Section 2's text and
constitutional context. See 599 U. S., at 103–104, 108–109;
compare ante, at 109–116. The Court noted his argument
that “[t]he Gingles framework should be [re]interpreted”—
and then said no. 599 U. S., at 39, n. 10 (alterations in origi-
nal). “[A]s we have explained,” the Court stated, “Gingles
effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that § 2 embod-
ies.” Ibid.; see id., at 17–19; supra, at 139–140. “And stat-
utory stare decisis,” the Court concluded, “counsels strongly
in favor of not undoing ” that “compromise.” 599 U. S., at
39, n. 10 (alteration omitted). Apparently, though, statutory
stare decisis is now done “counsel[ing],” id., at 39, and n. 10;
it is not so much as mentioned in today's opinion.
That void is more remarkable still given Allen's own reaf-
frmation of Gingles on the merits (even putting aside its
precedential status). Just control-fnd for all my citations of
Allen (or better yet read the decision), and you will have a
good idea of its character. In addition to awarding Gingles
the highest form of stare decisis protection, Allen (1) traced
the history of Section 2's amendment as I have, focusing on
Congress's rejection of Bolden's motive inquiry in favor of
White's effects test, see 599 U. S., at 10–14; (2) explained as
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and how the Court has used that framework “[f]or the past
for
ty years” “in one § 2 case after another,” 599 U. S., at 17–
19; (3) showed how the District Court's analysis (which
closely resembles the one here) conformed in all respects to
Gingles, see 599 U. S., at 19–23;
9
and (4) rejected the notions
that the Gingles framework should not apply to single-
member districting or that it violates the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, see 599 U. S., at 38–42; infra, at 166–167. The majori-
ty's main claim for why Allen nonetheless has no relevance
here is that the decision “was about” Alabama's “specifc argu-
ment” that a vote-dilution suit could succeed only if the State's
map deviated from a “race-neutral benchmark.” Ante, at 121.
Well, sure, Allen was about that too. And in rebuffng that
argument, it used reasoning that equally discredits the new
Callais requirements.
10
But even put that aside. The key
9
In that part of the opinion, the Court took note of Justice Thomas’s
complaint that “what the District Court did here is essentially no different
from what many courts have done for decades under this Court's superin-
tendence.” 599 U. S., at 26, n. 3 (dissenting opinion). The Court's one-
sentence response: “That is not such a bad defnition of stare decisis.”
Ibid.
10
That is so because Alabama's proposed “race-neutral benchmark” and
the majority's Callais requirements operate on the same (mistaken) logic.
Alabama's premise in urging the benchmark's adoption was that race-
neutral reasons for districting should defeat a Section 2 suit; the bench-
mark would show whether a districting plan in fact derived from such
reasons, or instead from impermissible race-based ones. See Allen, 599
U. S., at 23–24; Brief for Appellants in Allen v. Milligan, O. T. 2022, Nos.
21–1086, 21–1087, pp. 43–46, 75. The Callais requirements are different
in form but not in function: They too are designed to disentangle race-
based from race-neutral (e. g., partisan) reasons, on the (selfsame) view
that Section 2 liability should attach only to the former. See ante, at 115–
116, 118–120, 122. It is, then, not surprising that Allen's primary ground
for rejecting Alabama's benchmark also defeats the Callais requirements.
Allen responded that Ҥ 2 turns on the presence of discriminatory effects,
not discriminatory intent.” 599 U. S., at 25. So it would not matter that
the benchmark (and likewise the majority's alternative mechanism) sug-
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point here is that at every step of its multi-step analysis,
and
in every part of its multi-part opinion, Allen reaffrmed
Gingles—the old Gingles, with its old understanding of what
Congress did when amending Section 2. So Allen, too, de-
mands that today's majority, before mutilating Gingles, pos-
sess a “superspecial justifcation.” Kimble, 576 U. S., at 458.
And it does not have one. Not a superspecial justifcation;
not a special justifcation; not even an ordinary decent justi-
fcation. On the statute's text, on the statute's constitu-
tional context, and on “historical developments” post-dating
the statute—the majority fails at every turn. Ante, at 116.
The majority's textual analysis is long and winding and, in
its crucial move, wholly non-textual. The majority tells us
it will interpret the phrase “less opportunity than other
members of the electorate . . . to elect representatives of
their choice.” § 10301(b); see ante, at 110. It then says a
number of things, to no apparent effect, about the component
terms “opportunity,” “other members of the electorate,” and
“elect.” Ante, at 110–111. And then, the majority puts all
that aside and begins to free solo. See ante, at 111–112.
What the provision promises minority voters, the majority
says in the critical passage, is—and is only—“whatever op-
portunity results from the application of the State's combina-
tion of permissible criteria.” Ante, at 112. Can you fnd
that in the “less opportunity” phrase? What the majority
means is that if the State has used non-race-based criteria
(whether political or non-political) to draw its districts, then
Section 2 has nothing to say. Even though those criteria
produce a world (think about my cracked circle district) in
which minority voters, compared to their White neighbors,
have “less opportunity” to “elect representatives of their
choice,” a vote-dilution claim cannot prevail. § 10301(b).
That can only happen, according to the majority's view, when
the district lines arise from “[im]permissible,” race-based cri-
teria—that is, when the State's evident intent was to strip
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minority voters of their opportunity to elect. Ante, at 112.
W
ith that interpretation in mind, read Congress's “less op-
portunity” phrase again. It is miles away.
And of course it is. Because, once more, the “less oppor-
tunity” standard was designed to focus on the “results” of a
state practice, not on its justifcations. § 10301(a). Con-
gress had seen again and again—when it amended Section 2
in 1982, had seen for over a century—how race-neutral elec-
tion procedures, including in districting, could produce dis-
criminatory results. See supra, at 133–134, 139, 140–141.
Congress knew States did not have to rely on impermissible,
race-based criteria to “minimize[ ] or cancel[ ] out [minority]
voting strength.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 25. So when this
Court decided Bolden—which immunized race-neutral elec-
tion procedures unless a plaintiff could produce smoking-gun
evidence of discriminatory intent—Congress responded. It
did not, as I've described, opt for proportional representation;
it enacted a standard that would take some work to meet.
See § 10301; supra, at 145–146. But it most assuredly did not
amend Section 2 to give minority citizens only “whatever”
the “application of the State's combination of permissible”
(i. e., “nonracial”) “criteria” produced. Ante, at 112, 114.
So the majority must turn elsewhere, and it next lands on
the Constitution. There, it begins in settled territory. The
Fifteenth Amendment, all agree, prohibits only purposeful
discrimination. See ante, at 113. But that amendment, in
addition, grants Congress the power to enforce it by “appro-
priate legislation.” Even the majority concedes that grant
enables Congress to go further than the Amendment
would—to prohibit things by legislation that the Amend-
ment itself does not. See ante, at 112–113. The important
issue is how far and how much. And here the majority
makes an unprecedented claim. It contends that to “ensure”
compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment, Section 2 must
be construed to impose liability only when the circumstances
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Ante, at 113. And more, the majority makes clear that the
circumst
ances will not do so when the State can point to any
remotely plausible race-neutral justifcation—whether politi-
cal or non-political—for the district lines it has drawn. See
ante, at 114 (“Properly understood,” Section 2 “does not in-
trude on States' prerogative to draw districts based on non-
racial factors”). That is so regardless of how discriminatory
its districting is in operation—even to the point of “eliminat-
ing ” in one fell swoop “all majority-minority districts.”
Ante, at 113.
11
I just called that claim “unprecedented,” and so it is: The
majority has conjured it out of thin air. From before Sec-
tion 2 was amended until today, Congress was understood to
have constitutional power to ban practices resulting in un-
equal voting opportunities, irrespective of proof of racial mo-
tive. And likewise, Congress was understood to have power
to prohibit vote-diluting practices even when a State could
proffer some sort of plausible race-neutral justifcation. In
11
Note that the majority's constitutional analysis is based only on the
Fifteenth Amendment, and not at all on the Fourteenth. I would not
ordinarily think to make that blazingly obvious point. But in a second
attempt to distinguish this case from Allen (see supra, at 146–147, n. 4,
for the frst unsuccessful one), the majority insists that whereas “Allen
did not discuss the Fourteenth Amendment,” “[h]ere, by contrast, [the
Fourteenth Amendment] is the linchpin of this suit.” Ante, at 121. That
is not so, at least in any way that matters to the majority's analysis. The
Fourteenth Amendment serves as the entryway to that analysis, because
the suit in fact before us presents a racial gerrymandering claim. But as
I have described, the majority opts to decide that Fourteenth Amendment
claim by focusing on the earlier Section 2 vote-dilution claim from which
it arose. See supra, at 142–143, n. 2. The only Fourteenth Amendment
“holding ” here is that a court may not draw race-based district lines with-
out a compelling interest—something we have made plain many times
before. See ante, at 99–101. The real work of the opinion is in deciding
that compliance with Section 2 could not have given Louisiana a compel-
ling interest because that provision, as construed today, did not require
any change to the State's map. And that analysis is based only on Section
2 and the Fifteenth Amendment—exactly the subjects Allen covered.
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this Court's seminal decisions, we explained that the phrase
“appropr
iate legislation” in the Fifteenth Amendment grants
Congress “the same broad powers expressed in the Neces-
sary and Proper Clause.” Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S.
641, 650 (1966); see Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 325–327. So
Congress has “discretion” to determine “whether and what
legislation is needed to secure” the Amendment's “guaran-
tees.” Morgan, 384 U. S., at 651. And that discretion, as
critical here, extends to “outlaw[ing] voting practices that
are discriminatory in effect,” without proof of intent. City
of Rome, 446 U. S., at 173. In explaining why, this Court
frst underscored the connection between past discrimina-
tory intent and present discriminatory results: Congress, we
held, could decide that some unintentional state action works
to “freeze the effect of past [purposeful] discrimination.”
Id., at 176. And that was not all. Congress also could
enact an effects test, we held, as the appropriate way of pre-
venting current intentional discrimination—a sort of prophy-
lactic rule responding to the “risk” (often made reality in
American history) of a State's using ostensibly race-neutral
practices to cover impermissible goals. See id., at 177; see
also Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 309, 335.
And if those decisions are too ancient for today's majority,
it should consider (again) Allen, from three Terms ago.
There, Alabama made an argument, similar to the majority's,
that the effects-based framework of Section 2 and Gingles
too far strayed from the Fifteenth Amendment's ban on in-
tentional discrimination. We stomped on that objection.
“[T]he prior decisions of this Court,” we stated, “foreclose
any argument that Congress may not, pursuant to § 2 [of the
Fifteenth Amendment], outlaw voting practices that are dis-
criminatory in effect.” 599 U. S., at 41; see id., at 45 (opinion
of Kavanaugh, J.) (“[T]he constitutional argument pre-
sented by Alabama is not persuasive in light of the Court's
precedents”). Section 2's “ban on electoral changes that are
discriminatory in effect,” we continued, “is an appropriate
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method of promoting the purposes of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment.
” Id., at 41. And if that were not enough, one fnal
way of driving home the point: “[W]e are not persuaded” by
the view that the “effects test” of Section 2 “as interpreted
in Gingles exceeds the remedial authority of Congress.”
Ibid.
Those well-established precepts permit Congress to do
what Congress did when it amended Section 2—prohibit
electoral schemes based on their vote-diluting effects, re-
gardless whether a State could offer up some race-neutral
explanation. Congress then knew that it possessed such en-
forcement power; our decisions settling the issue were land-
marks of the civil rights era. And Congress decided to use
its authority. It did not make asserted state interests irrel-
evant: Those interests, indeed, had to be considered in the
“totality of circumstances” inquiry Congress prescribed.
§ 10301(b); see supra, at 146. But neither did Congress
make those interests a nearly impregnable shield, as the ma-
jority does today. It understood, just as the Court had, that
even race-neutral actions could perpetuate purposeful racial
discrimination. And it realized, again in the same vein as
the Court, that race-neutral explanations could conceal race-
based intent. See supra, at 140–142. Today's majority
makes plain its disdain for those views. See ante, at 112–
116. But the Fifteenth Amendment gave the power to en-
force its guarantees not to this Court but to Congress.
So the majority moves on again, now to a grab-bag of “de-
velopments” that it somehow thinks license it to rewrite a
statute. Ante, at 116–118. The majority frst summons the
slogan of Shelby County, in which the Court ordained itself
the arbiter of when civil rights laws are no longer needed.
“ `[T]hings have changed dramatically,' ” today's majority
echoes, pointing to increases in African American voting reg-
istration and to the success of “ `African-Americans attain-
[ing] political offce' ”—“particularly in the South, where
many § 2 suits arise.” Ante, at 116 (quoting Shelby County,

168 LOUISIAN
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Kagan, J., dissenting
570 U. S., at 547, 553). No doubt that is so, in large measure
becau
se of the Voting Rights Act. But it is a separate ques-
tion whether those gains will endure once the Act's protec-
tions are gone. See Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 590 (Gins-
burg, J., dissenting) (noting the fallacy of “throwing away
your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting
wet”). And surely—but apparently not—the proper actor
to answer that question is Congress. For one thing, it likely
has a fuller understanding of the issue. I will be interested
to see, for example, whether time will vindicate the majori-
ty's view that the “great strides” made in African American
offce-holding, “particularly in the South,” will hold up after
the issuance of this opinion. Ante, at 116. My own guess
is not. See supra, at 159–160. But honestly, the American
people pay no Member of this Court to make those predictive
policy judgments—and more important, the Constitution
does not allow us to base our decisions on them. It is for
the people's representatives in Congress to decide when the
Nation need no longer worry about the dilution of minority
voting strength. So long as Congress has not done so—and
it has not—this Court has no right to cancel (sorry, “update”)
a duly enacted statute on the theory that it knows better.
Indeed, the majority's “things have changed” stance here
is yet less defensible than in Shelby County. That is be-
cause Section 2, unlike the now-defunct Section 5, itself re-
sponds to change, so no external “fx” is needed. Section 5
selected jurisdictions for preclearance based on past condi-
tions; so if the provision's last authorization was many years
in the past, the mechanism could appear outdated. See
Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 551 (“Coverage today is based
on decades-old data and eradicated practices”). Section 2,
by contrast, does not run on historical data. Liability at-
taches based only on present electoral practices and the pres-
ent discrimination they “result[ ] in.” § 10301(a). A plain-
tiff must prove that the political process is “not equally open
to participation” by all citizens at the time of suit; if he can-
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not, he loses. Ibid. There is thus no danger, as Shelby
C
ounty put it, that “current burdens” are not “justifed by
current needs.” 570 U. S., at 536. Under Section 2, they
must be.
The Gingles preconditions yet further anchor Section 2
suits in the here-and-now by working as built-in sunset
clauses. The frst precondition is met only if a racial group
is (in the present) geographically concentrated. See supra,
at 144–145. That means as residential segregation de-
creases in a State, Section 2 becomes unavailable as a rem-
edy. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 28–29. Similarly, the second
and third preconditions can be satisfed only if voting (again,
in the present) is racially polarized. See supra, at 144–145.
So as racial bloc voting recedes, Section 2 ceases to operate.
And racial desegregation and depolarization are not just pos-
sible in theory; they are happening in fact—and at speed—
in many parts of the country. See Brief for Nicholas O.
Stephanopoulos as Amicus Curiae 16–29. Consistent with
those trends, the number of successful Section 2 vote-
dilution suits (always fairly small) has declined every decade
since the statute was amended. Katz Brief 6. In short, as
“things change dramatically,” Section 2 self-liquidates—and
to a fair extent, it already has. But in the places where,
because of local conditions, the law continues to work, the
Court has no warrant to speed its demise.
Nor is the majority aided by what it terms the emergence
of a “full-blown two-party system” in “the States where § 2
suits are most common.” Ante, at 117. As to that develop-
ment, the majority reiterates its persistent theme: When ra-
cially polarized voting expresses itself in different party pref-
erences, district lines may refect partisan rather than racial
motives, and so Section 2 should drop out of the picture. See
ante, at 117, 119–120, 121–122. But as an initial matter, the
majority's newly formulated test will eliminate the lion's
share of Section 2 claims even when racially polarized voting
occurs within a single party—as in the Solicitor General's
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Kagan, J., dissenting
Harlem example, discussed above. See supra, at 154–155.
The
State could not then assert a partisan-gerrymandering
defense, but it could invoke a host of other race-neutral justi-
fcations, like incumbency protection or district continuity, to
ward off liability. In short, the majority's test fails to save
Section 2 even for the “intra-party [racial] disparities” that
the majority asserts Congress had in mind. Ante, at 117.
And more fundamentally, the majority is wrong on its his-
tory. By 1982 (the year of Section 2's amendment), Con-
gress well knew that “race is often correlated with party
preference,” because that was increasingly the case. Ibid.
Senate hearings were replete with testimony about that
growing correlation, with opponents of the House's “results
in” language (Senator Hatch and his camp) questioning wit-
nesses about why “minority groups alone” should be “im-
mune to partisan or ideological gerrymandering.” Senate
Report, at 184; see id., at 172, n. 235; Hearings on S. 53 et al.
before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the S. Comm. on
the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., 649, 964–965, 1255, 1376–
1377 (1982). But those proponents of Bolden, of course, did
not get their way: The Dole proposal maintained the House's
emphasis on results, not motives. See supra, at 140. So
the majority's appeal to an old “one-party system,” ante, at
117, like the rest of its insistence on disentangling partisan-
ship and race, works not to uphold but instead to overthrow
the bargain Congress made.
The last argument about “post-Gingles development[s]”
worth mentioning is also the most dispiriting. Ibid. Seven
years ago, this Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause, 588
U. S. 684 (2019), that claims of political gerrymandering are
not justiciable in federal court. That was, in my view, an
ill-considered decision, whose adverse effects have never
been more obvious than today, as this country's two major
parties compete in a race to the bottom. But to its (modest)
credit, the Rucho Court did not pretend that partisan gerry-
manders were something in need of safeguarding. To the
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contrary, the Court conceded that they were “incompatible
w
ith democratic principles” and “lead[ ] to results that rea-
sonably seem unjust.” Id., at 718. (The Court's rationale
was only that federal courts lack competence to deal with
gerrymanders, not that they were protected by law or bene-
fcial as policy.) Today, though, the majority straight-
facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought
low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders. See
ante, at 117–118. For how else, the majority reasons, can
we preserve the authority of States to engage in this practice
than by stripping minority citizens of their rights to an equal
political process? See ibid. And with that, the majority as
much as invites States to embark on a new round of partisan
gerrymanders—and makes an already bad precedent into
one still worse. It is not enough that Rucho has harmed
the whole body politic. Now, that decision also becomes the
cudgel to diminish the rightful voting infuence of its minor-
ity citizens.
IV
Congress amended Section 2 to reverse this Court's deci-
sion in Bolden that the law barred only intentional racial
discrimination in voting. Based on a century of history,
Congress determined that such a limited ban would not be
enough to protect minority citizens' voting rights. The leg-
islation Congress enacted to correct Bolden emerged from
vigorous debate and careful compromise, based mainly on
this Court's decision in White. The new law denied a right
to proportional representation; it focused instead on the “op-
portunity” that a given election practice granted minority
citizens. But the requisite opportunity was not to be as-
sessed by a State's intent or by its proffered justifcations.
Rather, the lawfulness of an election practice was to turn on
its “results”—on whether it gave minority citizens a lesser
chance than their majority neighbors to participate in politics
and elect candidates. In making that choice, Congress exer-
cised its constitutional responsibility to enforce the Fifteenth
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Amendment. And when called on to interpret the new law,
th
is Court—from Gingles all the way through Allen—re-
spected and implemented what Congress had done.
Today's majority does not. Its supposed “updating ” of
Gingles overthrows Congress's decision to make Section 2
liability hinge on an electoral practice's effects—on how it
actually works. The new Callais requirements will effec-
tively insulate any practice, including any districting scheme,
said by a State to have any race-neutral justifcation. That
justifcation can sound in traditional districting criteria, or
else can sound in politics and partisanship. As to the latter,
the State need do nothing more than announce a partisan
gerrymander. Assuming the State has left behind no
smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive (an almost fan-
ciful prospect), Section 2 will play no role. “Whatever”—
whatever—results from the State's asserted justifcation is
all its minority citizens are entitled to. Ante, at 112. Even
if the State has deprived those citizens (but not their major-
ity neighbors) of all opportunity to “elect representatives of
their choice,” the law will not protect them. § 10301(b). It
is Bolden redux, despite Congress's repudiation of that deci-
sion (and this Court's precedents honoring that rejection).
The majority has made its own assessment of current needs,
see ante, at 116–118, and concluded that preventing racial
vote dilution does not count among them. So once again,
“in the absence of proof of intentional discrimination,” the
right to vote gives minority citizens “nothing more than the
right to cast meaningless ballots.” Bolden, 446 U. S., at 104
(Marshall, J., dissenting).
The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave.
Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In
the States where that law continues to matter—the States
still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized
voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the elec-
toral process. The decision here is about Louisiana's Dis-
trict 6. But so too it is about Louisiana's District 2. See
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supra, at 159–160. And so too it is about the many other
distr
icts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-cen-
tury have given minority citizens, and particularly African
Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those
districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.
If other States follow Louisiana's lead, the minority citizens
residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to
elect candidates of their choice. And minority representa-
tion in government institutions will sharply decline. At the
frst stage of this judicial project to destroy the Voting
Rights Act, the Court maintained that Section 5 was no
longer needed because in recent decades “African-Americans
attained political offce in record numbers.” Shelby County,
570 U. S., at 553; see id., at 549. At this last stage, the
Court's gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril.
I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent be-
cause the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the
great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court's
decision will set back the foundational right Congress
granted of racia l equa l ity i n elec tora l oppor tunity. I
dissent.
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Reporter’s Note
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. Other revisions may include adjustments to formatting, cap-
tions, citation form, and any errant punctuation. The following additional
edits were made:
p. 120, line 8 from bottom: “are” is changed to “is”
p. 122, line 4: “enacted” is changed to “amended”
p. 128, line 14 from bottom: “whom” is changed to “who”
p. 156, n. 7, line 10 from bottom: “same” is inserted after “the”