Introduction:
Included here are Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in the Court’s 2023 decision, along with Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion, affirming a district court’s finding that Alabama’s 2023 distracting map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and a 2026 stay of the same district court’s second injunction against the same map, following a revision of the Court’s standards for vote-dilution claims it ordered in Lousiana v. Callais. It is no longer sufficient for a paintiff to demonstrate that a challenged map effectively dilutes the voting power of a racial minority; the plaintiff must now demonstrate that race was a motivating factor in the adoption of that map. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the second case is included. That dissent aligns closely with Roberts’ 2023 opinion, as well as Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in Lousiana v. Callais, not included here.
In Louisiana, the Court decided that the 1982 amended version Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly, was inconsistent with the original 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, despite 40 years of Court precedent. By 1982, Congress had grown wary of the various “race-neutral” schemes States had devised to discriminate against racial minorities in voting, including diluting their voting strength in districting maps. So Congress outlawed voting schemes which had the effect of discriminating against minorities, without the plaintiffs having to demonstrate intent to do so.
That was too much for Alito and five colleagues, including Roberts, apparently, who had eloquently defended the “effects test” only three years before in Allen. Alito’s opinion set a very high hurdle for Section 2 plaintiffs: in States with racially polarized voting, where blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and whites for Republicans, plaintiffs now have to “disentangle” racial motives from political motives of legislatures in challenging districting maps. Alito ran with a 2019 decision, Rucho v. Common Cause, in which the Court ruled that the judiciary had no authority or practical standards by which to referee political gerrymandering disputes. Plaintiffs now have to demonstrate that racial motives, not legal partisan motives, drove the drafting and adoption of a challenged map. Further, their proposed maps have to meet all the criteria of the challenged State maps, including any partisan objectives.
Roberts wrote the decision in Rucho, and four years later, in Allen, he nevertheless saw no need for Alito’s near impossible standard of disentangling race and politics to demonstrate that the former drove a districting map which diluted the black (as opposed to the Democratic) vote.
Allen v. Milligan (2023):
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–B–1.*
In January 2022, a three-judge District Court sitting in Alabama preliminarily enjoined the State from using the districting plan it had recently adopted for the 2022 congressional elections, finding that the plan likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U. S. C. §10301. This Court stayed the District Court’s order pending further review. 595 U. S. ___ (2022). After conducting that review, we now affirm.
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I
A
Shortly after the Civil War, Congress passed and the States ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, providing that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, §1. In the century that followed, however, the Amendment proved little more than a parchment promise. Jim Crow laws like literacy tests, poll taxes, and “good-morals” requirements abounded, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 312–313 (1966), “render[ing] the right to vote illusory for blacks,” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 220–221 (2009) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Congress stood up to little of it; “[t]he first century of congressional enforcement of the [Fifteenth] Amendment . . . can only be regarded as a failure.” Id., at 197 (majority opinion).
That changed in 1965. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Congress enacted and President Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act. 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 52 U. S. C. §10301 et seq. The Act “create[d] stringent new remedies for voting discrimination,” attempting to forever “banish the blight of racial discrimination in voting.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308. By 1981, in only sixteen years’ time, many considered the VRA “the most successful civil rights statute in the history of the Nation.” S. Rep. No. 97– 417, p. 111 (1982) (Senate Report).
These cases concern Section 2 of that Act. In its original form, “§2 closely tracked the language of the [Fifteenth] Amendment” and, as a result, had little independent force. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 3).1 Our leading case on §2 at the
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time was City of Mobile v. Bolden, which involved a claim by black voters that the City’s at-large election system effectively excluded them from participating in the election of city commissioners. 446 U. S. 55 (1980). The commission had three seats, black voters comprised one-third of the City’s population, but no black-preferred candidate had ever won election.
The Court ruled against the plaintiffs. The Fifteenth Amendment—and thus §2—prohibits States from acting with a “racially discriminatory motivation” or an “invidious purpose” to discriminate. Id., at 61–65 (plurality opinion). But it does not prohibit laws that are discriminatory only in effect. Ibid. The Mobile plaintiffs could “register and vote without hindrance”—“their freedom to vote ha[d] not been denied or abridged by anyone.” Id., at 65. The fact that they happened to lose frequently was beside the point. Nothing the City had done “purposeful[ly] exclu[ded]” them “from participati[ng] in the election process.” Id., at 64.
Almost immediately after it was decided, Mobile “produced an avalanche of criticism, both in the media and within the civil rights community.” T. Boyd & S. Markman, The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: A Legislative History, 40 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1347, 1355 (1983) (Boyd & Markman). The New York Times wrote that the decision represented “the biggest step backwards in civil rights to come from the Nixon Court.” N. Y. Times, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A22. And the Washington Post described Mobile as a “major defeat for blacks and other minorities fighting electoral schemes that exclude them from office.” Washington Post, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A5. By focusing on discriminatory intent and ignoring disparate effect, critics argued, the Court had abrogated “the standard used by the courts to
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determine whether [racial] discrimination existed . . . : Whether such discrimination existed.” It’s Results That Count, Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 3, 1982, p. 8–A.
But Mobile had its defenders, too. In their view, abandoning the intent test in favor of an effects test would inevitably require a focus on proportionality—wherever a minority group won fewer seats in the legislature than its share of the population, the charge could be made that the State law had a discriminatory effect. That, after all, was the type of claim brought in Mobile. But mandating racial proportionality in elections was regarded by many as intolerable. Doing so, wrote Senator Orrin Hatch in the Washington Star, would be “strongly resented by the American public.” Washington Star, Sept. 30, 1980, p. A–9. The Wall Street Journal offered similar criticism. An effects test would generate “more, not less, racial and ethnic polarization.” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 1982, p. 28.
This sharp debate arrived at Congress’s doorstep in 1981. The question whether to broaden §2 or keep it as is, said Hatch—by then Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee before which §2 would be debated—“involve[d] one of the most substantial constitutional issues ever to come before this body.”. 2 Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 1, p. 1 (1982).
Proceedings in Congress mirrored the disagreement that had developed around the country. In April 1981, Congressman Peter W. Rodino, Jr.—longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee—introduced a bill to amend the VRA, proposing that the words “to deny or abridge” in §2 be replaced with the phrase “in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement.” H. R. 3112, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (as introduced) (emphasis added). This was the effects test that Mobile’s detractors sought.
But those wary of proportionality were not far behind. Senator Hatch argued that the effects test “was intelligible
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only to the extent that it approximated a standard of proportional representation by race.”. Boyd & Markman 1392. The Attorney General had the same concern. The effects test “would be triggered whenever election results did not mirror the population mix of a particular community,” he wrote, producing “essentially a quota system for electoral politics.” N. Y. Times, Mar. 27, 1982, p. 23.
The impasse was not resolved until late April 1982, when Senator Bob Dole proposed a compromise. Boyd & Markman 1414. Section 2 would include the effects test that many desired but also a robust disclaimer against proportionality. Seeking to navigate any tension between the two, the Dole Amendment borrowed language from a Fourteenth Amendment case of ours, White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973), which many in Congress believed would allow courts to consider effects but avoid proportionality. The standard for liability in voting cases, White explained, was whether “the political processes leading to nomination and election were not equally open to participation by the group in question—[in] that its members had less opportunity than did other residents in the district to participate in the political processes and to elect legislators of their choice.” Id., at 766.
The Dole compromise won bipartisan support and, on June 18, the Senate passed the 1982 amendments by an overwhelming margin, 85–8. Eleven days later, President Reagan signed the Act into law. The amended §2 reads as follows:
“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color . . . as provided in subsection (b). “(b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if,
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based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens . . . in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” 52 U. S. C. §10301.
B
For the first 115 years following Reconstruction, the State of Alabama elected no black Representatives to Congress. See Singleton v. Merrill, 582 F. Supp. 3d 924, 947 (ND Ala. 2022) (per curiam). In 1992, several plaintiffs sued the State, alleging that it had been impermissibly diluting the votes of black Alabamians in violation of §2. See Wesch v. Hunt, 785 F. Supp. 1491, 1493 (SD Ala.). The lawsuit produced a majority-black district in Alabama for the first time in decades. Id., at 1499. And that fall, Birmingham lawyer Earl Hillard became the first black Representative from Alabama since 1877. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 947
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In 2020, the decennial census revealed that Alabama’s population had grown by 5.1%. See 1 App. 86. A group of plaintiffs led by Alabama legislator Bobby Singleton sued the State, arguing that the existing congressional map was malapportioned and racially gerrymandered in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 938–939. While litigation was proceeding, the Alabama Legislature’s Committee on Reapportionment began creating a new districting map. Ibid. Although the prior decade’s population growth did not change the number of seats that Alabama would receive in the House, the growth had been unevenly distributed across the State, and the existing map was thus out of date.
To solve the problem, the State turned to experienced mapmaker Randy Hinaman, who had created several districting maps that Alabama used over the past 30 years. Id., at 947–948. The starting point for Hinaman was the then-existing 2011 congressional map, itself a product of the 2001 map that Hinaman had also created. Civ. No. 21– 1530 (ND Ala.), ECF Doc. 70–2, pp. 40, 93–94; see also 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 950. Hinaman worked to adjust the 2011 map in accordance with the redistricting guidelines set by the legislature’s Reapportionment Committee. Id., at 948– 950; 1 App. 275. Those guidelines prioritized population equality, contiguity, compactness, and avoiding dilution of minority voting strength. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1035–1036. They also encouraged, as a secondary matter, avoiding incumbent pairings, respecting communities of interest, minimizing the number of counties in each district, and preserving cores of existing districts. Id., at 1036–1037.
The resulting map Hinaman drew largely resembled the 2011 map, again producing only one district in which black voters constituted a majority of the voting age population.
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Supp. App. 205–211. The Alabama Legislature enacted Hinaman’s map under the name HB1. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 935, 950–951. Governor Ivey signed HB1 into law on November 4, 2021. Id., at 950.
C
Three groups of plaintiffs brought suit seeking to stop Alabama’s Secretary of State from conducting congressional elections under HB1. The first group was led by Dr. Marcus Caster, a resident of Washington County, who challenged HB1 as invalid under §2. Id., at 934–935, 980. The second group, led by Montgomery County resident Evan Milligan, brought claims under §2 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 939–940, 966. Finally, the Singleton plaintiffs, who had previously sued to enjoin Alabama’s 2011 congressional map, amended their complaint to challenge HB1 as an impermissible racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 938– 939.
A three-judge District Court was convened, comprised of Circuit Judge Marcus and District Judges Manasco and Moorer. The Singleton and Milligan actions were consolidated before the three-judge Court for purposes of preliminary injunction proceedings, while Caster proceeded before Judge Manasco on a parallel track. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 934– 935. A preliminary injunction hearing began on January 4, 2022, and concluded on January 12. Id., at 943. In that time, the three-judge District Court received live testimony from 17 witnesses, reviewed more than 1000 pages of briefing and upwards of 350 exhibits, and considered arguments from the 43 different lawyers who had appeared in the litigation. Id., at 935–936. After reviewing that extensive record, the Court concluded in a 227-page opinion that the question whether HB1 likely violated §2 was not “a close one.” It did. Id., at 1026. The Court thus preliminarily enjoined Alabama from using HB1 in forthcoming elections.
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Id., at 936.2
Four days later, on January 28, Alabama moved in this Court for a stay of the District Court’s injunction. This Court granted a stay and scheduled the cases for argument, noting probable jurisdiction in Milligan and granting certiorari before judgment in Caster. 595 U. S. ___ (2022).
II
The District Court found that plaintiffs demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that HB1 violates §2. We affirm that determination.
A
For the past forty years, we have evaluated claims brought under §2 using the three-part framework developed in our decision Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Gingles concerned a challenge to North Carolina’s multimember districting scheme, which allegedly diluted the vote of its black citizens. Id., at 34–36. The case presented the first opportunity since the 1982 amendments to address how the new §2 would operate.
Gingles began by describing what §2 guards against. “The essence of a §2 claim,” the Court explained, “is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an “electoral structure operates to minimize or cancel out” minority voters’ “ability to elect their preferred candidates.” Id., at 48. Such a risk is greatest
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“where minority and majority voters consistently prefer different candidates” and where minority voters are submerged in a majority voting population that “regularly defeat[s]” their choices. Ibid.
To succeed in proving a §2 violation under Gingles, plaintiffs must satisfy three “preconditions.” Id., at 50. First, the “minority group must be sufficiently large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.” Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Comm’n, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (per curiam) (slip op., at 3) (citing Gingles, 478 U. S., at 46–51). A district will be reasonably configured, our cases explain, if it comports with traditional districting criteria, such as being contiguous and reasonably compact. See Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, 575 U. S. 254, 272 (2015). “Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. And third, “the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. Finally, a plaintiff who demonstrates the three preconditions must also show, under the “totality of circumstances,” that the political process is not “equally open” to minority voters. Id., at 45–46; see also id., at 36–38 (identifying several factors relevant to the totality of circumstances inquiry, including “the extent of any history of official discrimination in the state . . . that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process”).
Each Gingles precondition serves a different purpose. The first, focused on geographical compactness and numerosity, is “needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district.” Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S. 25, 40 (1993). The second, concerning the political cohesiveness of the minority group, shows that a representative of its choice
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would in fact be elected. See ibid. The third precondition, focused on racially polarized voting, “establish[es] that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote” at least plausibly on account of race. Ibid. And finally, the totality of circumstances inquiry recognizes that application of the Gingles factors is “peculiarly dependent upon the facts of each case.” 478 U. S., at 79. Before courts can find a violation of §2, therefore, they must conduct “an intensely local appraisal” of the electoral mechanism at issue, as well as a “searching practical evaluation of the ‘past and present reality.’” Ibid.
Gingles has governed our Voting Rights Act jurisprudence since it was decided 37 years ago. Congress has never disturbed our understanding of §2 as Gingles construed it. And we have applied Gingles in one §2 case after another, to different kinds of electoral systems and to different jurisdictions in States all over the country. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146 (1993) (Ohio); Growe, 507 U. S., at 25 (Minnesota); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997 (1994) (Florida); Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874 (1994) (Georgia); Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U. S. 74 (1997) (Georgia); League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 423 (2006) (LULAC) (Texas); Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U. S. 1 (2009) (plurality opinion) (North Carolina); Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285 (2017) (North Carolina); Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. ___ (2018) (Texas); Wisconsin Legislature, 595 U. S. ___ (Wisconsin).
B
As noted, the District Court concluded that plaintiffs’ §2 claim was likely to succeed under Gingles. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1026. Based on our review of the record, we agree. With respect to the first Gingles precondition, the District Court correctly found that black voters could constitute a majority in a second district that was “reasonably configured.” 1 App. to Emergency Application for Stay in No. 21–
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1086 etc., p. 253 (MSA). The plaintiffs adduced eleven illustrative maps—that is, example districting maps that Alabama could enact—each of which contained two majority black districts that comported with traditional districting criteria. With respect to compactness, for example, the District Court explained that the maps submitted by one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Moon Duchin, “perform[ed] generally better on average than” did HB1. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1009. A map offered by another of plaintiffs’ experts, Bill Cooper, produced districts roughly as compact as the existing plan. Ibid. And none of plaintiffs’ maps contained any “tentacles, appendages, bizarre shapes, or any other obvious irregularities that would make it difficult to find” them sufficiently compact. Id., at 1011. Plaintiffs’ maps also satisfied other traditional districting criteria. They contained equal populations, were contiguous, and respected existing political subdivisions, such as counties, cities, and towns. Id., at 1011, 1016. Indeed, some of plaintiffs’ proposed maps split the same number of county lines as (or even fewer county lines than) the State’s map. Id., at 1011–1012. We agree with the District Court, therefore, that plaintiffs’ illustrative maps “strongly suggest[ed] that Black voters in Alabama” could constitute a majority in a second, reasonably configured, district. Id., at 1010.
The State nevertheless argues that plaintiffs’ maps were not reasonably configured because they failed to keep together a traditional community of interest within Alabama. See, e.g., id., at 1012. A “community of interest,” according to Alabama’s districting guidelines, is an “area with recognized similarities of interests, including but not limited to ethnic, racial, economic, tribal, social, geographic, or historical identities.” Ibid. Alabama argues that the Gulf Coast region in the southwest of the State is such a community of interest, and that plaintiffs’ maps erred by separating it into two different districts. Ibid.
We do not find the State’s argument persuasive. Only
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two witnesses testified that the Gulf Coast was a community of interest. Id., at 1015. The testimony provided by one of those witnesses was “partial, selectively informed, and poorly supported.” Ibid. The other witness, meanwhile, justified keeping the Gulf Coast together “simply” to preserve “political advantage[]”: “You start splitting counties,” he testified, “and that county loses its influence. That’s why I don’t want Mobile County to be split.” Id., at 990, 1015. The District Court understandably found this testimony insufficient to sustain Alabama’s “overdrawn argument that there can be no legitimate reason to split” the Gulf Coast region. Id., at 1015.
Even if the Gulf Coast did constitute a community of interest, moreover, the District Court found that plaintiffs’ maps would still be reasonably configured because they joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt. Id., at 1012–1014. Named for its fertile soil, the Black Belt contains a high proportion of black voters, who “share a rural geography, concentrated poverty, unequal access to government services, . . . lack of adequate healthcare,” and a lineal connection to “the many enslaved people brought there to work in the antebellum period.” Id., at 1012–1013; see also 1 App. 299–304. The District Court concluded—correctly, under our precedent—that it did not have to conduct a “beauty contest[]” between plaintiffs’ maps and the State’s. There would be a split community of interest in both. 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1012 (quoting Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 977–978 (1996) (plurality opinion)).
The State also makes a related argument based on “core retention”—a term that refers to the proportion of districts that remain when a State transitions from one districting plan to another. See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 25, 61. Here, by largely mirroring Alabama’s 2011 districting plan, HB1 performs well on the core retention metric. Plaintiffs’ illustrative plans, by contrast, naturally fare worse because they change where the 2011 district lines were drawn. See
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e.g., Supp. App. 164–173. But this Court has never held that a State’s adherence to a previously used districting plan can defeat a §2 claim. If that were the rule, a State could immunize from challenge a new racially discriminatory redistricting plan simply by claiming that it resembled an old racially discriminatory plan. That is not the law: §2 does not permit a State to provide some voters “less opportunity . . . to participate in the political process” just because the State has done it before. 52 U. S. C. §10301(b).
As to the second and third Gingles preconditions, the District Court determined that there was “no serious dispute that Black voters are politically cohesive, nor that the challenged districts’ white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate.” 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1016 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court noted that, “on average, Black voters supported their candidates of choice with 92.3% of the vote” while “white voters supported Black-preferred candidates with 15.4% of the vote.” Id., at 1017 (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiffs’ experts described the evidence of racially polarized voting in Alabama as “intens[e],” “very strong,” and “very clear.” Ibid. Even Alabama’s expert conceded “that the candidates preferred by white voters in the areas that he looked at regularly defeat the candidates preferred by Black voters.” Id., at 1018.
Finally, the District Court concluded that plaintiffs had carried their burden at the totality of circumstances stage. The Court observed that elections in Alabama were racially polarized; that “Black Alabamians enjoy virtually zero success in statewide elections”; that political campaigns in Alabama had been “characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals”; and that “Alabama’s extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination is undeniable and well documented.” Id., at 1018–1024
We see no reason to disturb the District Court’s careful factual findings, which are subject to clear error review and
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have gone unchallenged by Alabama in any event. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at 309. Nor is there a basis to upset the District Court’s legal conclusions. The Court faithfully applied our precedents and correctly determined that, under existing law, HB1 violated §2.
III
The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew.
The centerpiece of the State’s effort is what it calls the “race-neutral benchmark.” The theory behind it is this: Using modern computer technology, mapmakers can now generate millions of possible districting maps for a given State. The maps can be designed to comply with traditional districting criteria but to not consider race. The mapmaker can determine how many majority-minority districts exist in each map, and can then calculate the median or average number of majority-minority districts in the entire multimillion-map set. That number is called the race-neutral benchmark.
The State contends that this benchmark should serve as the point of comparison in §2 cases. The benchmark, the State says, was derived from maps that were “race-blind”— maps that cannot have “deni[ed] or abridge[d]” anyone’s right to vote “on account of race” because they never took race into “account” in the first place. 52 U. S. C. §10301(a). Courts in §2 cases should therefore compare the number of majority-minority districts in the State’s plan to the benchmark. If those numbers are similar—if the State’s map “resembles” the benchmark in this way—then, Alabama argues, the State’s map also cannot have “deni[ed] or abridge[d]” anyone’s right to vote “on account of race.” Ibid.
Alabama contends that its approach should be adopted for two reasons. First, the State argues that a race-neutral benchmark best matches the text of the Voting Rights Act.
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Section 2 requires that the political processes be “equally open.” §10301(b). What that means, the State asserts, is that the State’s map cannot impose “obstacles or burdens that block or seriously hinder voting on account of race.” Brief for Alabama 43. These obstacles do not exist, in the State’s view, where its map resembles a map that never took race into “account.” Ibid. Second, Alabama argues that the Gingles framework ends up requiring racial proportionality in districting. According to the State, Gingles demands that where “another majority-black district could be drawn, it must be drawn.” Brief for Alabama 71 (emphasis deleted). And that sort of proportionality, Alabama continues, is inconsistent with the compromise that Congress struck, with the text of §2, and with the Constitution’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.
To apply the race-neutral benchmark in practice, Alabama would require §2 plaintiffs to make at least three showings. First, the illustrative plan that plaintiffs adduce for the first Gingles precondition cannot have been “based” on race. Brief for Alabama 56. Second, plaintiffs must show at the totality of circumstances stage that the State’s enacted plan diverges from the average plan that would be drawn without taking race into account. And finally, plaintiffs must ultimately prove that any deviation between the State’s plan and a race-neutral plan is explainable “only” by race—not, for example, by “the State’s naturally occurring geography and demography.” Id., at 46.
As we explain below, we find Alabama’s new approach to §2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice. We accordingly decline to recast our §2 case law as Alabama requests.
A
1
Section 2 prohibits States from imposing any “standard, practice, or procedure . . . in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen . . . to vote
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on account of race or color.” 52 U. S. C. §10301(a). What that means, §2 goes on to explain, is that the political processes in the State must be “equally open,” such that minority voters do not “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” §10301(b).
We have understood the language of §2 against the background of the hard-fought compromise that Congress struck. To that end, we have reiterated that §2 turns on the presence of discriminatory effects, not discriminatory intent. See, e.g., Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 403–404 (1991). And we have explained that “[i]t is patently clear that Congress has used the words ‘on account of race or color’ in the Act to mean ‘with respect to’ race or color, and not to connote any required purpose of racial discrimination.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 71, n. 34 (plurality opinion) (some alterations omitted). Individuals thus lack an equal opportunity to participate in the political process when a State’s electoral structure operates in a manner that “minimize[s] or cancel[s] out the[ir] voting strength.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an individual is disabled from “enter[ing] into the political process in a reliable and meaningful manner” “in the light of past and present reality, political and otherwise.” White, 412 U. S., at 767, 770. A district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.
The State’s reading of §2, by contrast, runs headlong into our precedent. Alabama asserts that a State’s map does not “abridge[]” a person’s right to vote “on account of race” if the map resembles a sufficient number of race-neutral alternatives. See Brief for Alabama 54–56. But our cases have consistently focused, for purposes of litigation, on the
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specific illustrative maps that a plaintiff adduces. Deviation from that [State’s] map shows it is possible that the State’s map has a disparate effect on account of race. The remainder of the Gingles test helps determine whether that possibility is reality by looking to polarized voting preferences and the frequency of racially discriminatory actions taken by the State, past and present.
A State’s liability under §2, moreover, must be determined “based on the totality of circumstances.” 52 U. S. C. §10301(b). Yet Alabama suggests there is only one “circumstance[]” that matters—how the State’s map stacks up relative to the benchmark. That single-minded view of §2 cannot be squared with the VRA’s demand that courts employ a more refined approach. And we decline to adopt an interpretation of §2 that would “revise and reformulate the Gingles threshold inquiry that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence” for nearly forty years. Bartlett, 556 U. S., at 16 (plurality opinion); see also Wisconsin Legislature, 595 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (faulting lower court for “improperly reduc[ing] Gingles’ totality-of-circumstances analysis to a single factor”); De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1018 (“An inflexible rule would run counter to the textual command of §2, that the presence or absence of a violation be assessed ‘based on the totality of circumstances.’”).3
2
Alabama also argues that the race-neutral benchmark is required because our existing §2 jurisprudence inevitably demands racial proportionality in districting, contrary to the last sentence of §2(b). But properly applied, the Gingles framework itself imposes meaningful constraints on pro-
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3. The principal dissent complains that “what the District Court did here is essentially no different from what many courts have done for decades under this Court’s superintendence.” Post, at 47 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). That is not such a bad definition of stare decisis.
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portionality, as our decisions have frequently demonstrated.
In Shaw v. Reno, for example, we considered the permissibility of a second majority-minority district in North Carolina, which at the time had 12 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives and a 20% black voting age population. 509 U. S. 630, 633–634 (1993). The second majority-minority district North Carolina drew was “160 miles long and, for much of its length, no wider than the [interstate] corridor.” Id., at 635. The district wound “in snakelike fashion through tobacco country, financial centers, and manufacturing areas until it gobble[d] in enough enclaves of black neighborhoods.” Id., at 635–636. Indeed, the district was drawn so imaginatively that one state legislator remarked: “[I]f you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district.” Id., at 636.
Though North Carolina believed the additional district was required by §2, we rejected that conclusion, finding instead that those challenging the map stated a claim of impermissible racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 655, 658. In so holding, we relied on the fact that the proposed district was not reasonably compact. Id., at 647. North Carolina had “concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district by disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions.” Ibid. (emphasis added). And “[a] reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise separated by geographical and political boundaries,” we said, raised serious constitutional concerns. Ibid. (emphasis added).
The same theme emerged in our 1995 decision Miller v. Johnson, where we upheld a district court’s finding that one of Georgia’s ten congressional districts was the product of an impermissible racial gerrymander. 515 U. S. 900, 906,910–911. At the time, Georgia’s black voting age population
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was 27%, but there was only one majority-minority district. Id., at 906. To comply with the VRA, Georgia thought it necessary to create two more majority-minority districts— achieving proportionality. Id., at 920–921. But like North Carolina in Shaw, Georgia could not create the districts without flouting traditional criteria. One district “centered around four discrete, widely spaced urban centers that ha[d] absolutely nothing to do with each other, and stretch[ed] the district hundreds of miles across rural counties and narrow swamp corridors.” 515 U. S., at 908. “Geographically,” we said of the map, “it is a monstrosity.” Id., at 909.
In Bush v. Vera, a plurality of the Court again explained how traditional districting criteria limited any tendency of the VRA to compel proportionality. The case concerned Texas’s creation of three additional majority-minority districts. 517 U. S., at 957. Though the districts brought the State closer to proportional representation, we nevertheless held that they constituted racial gerrymanders in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. That was because the districts had “no integrity in terms of traditional, neutral redistricting criteria.” Id., at 960. One of the majority-black districts consisted “of narrow and bizarrely shaped tentacles.” Id., at 965. The proposed majority-Hispanic district resembled “a sacred Mayan bird” with “[s]pindly legs reach[ing] south” and a “plumed head ris[ing] northward.” Id., at 974.
The point of all this is a simple one. Forcing proportional representation is unlawful and inconsistent with this Court’s approach to implementing §2. The numbers bear the point out well. At the congressional level, the fraction of districts in which black-preferred candidates are likely to win “is currently below the Black share of the eligible voter population in every state but three.” Brief for Professors Jowei Chen et al. as Amici Curiae 3 (Chen Brief ). Only one
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State in the country, meanwhile, “has attained a proportional share” of districts in which Hispanic-preferred candidates are likely to prevail. Id., at 3–4. That is because as residential segregation decreases—as it has “sharply” done since the 1970s—satisfying traditional districting criteria such as the compactness requirement “becomes more difficult.” T. Crum, Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, 70 Duke L. J. 261, 279, and n. 105 (2020). Indeed, as amici supporting the appellees emphasize, §2 litigation in recent years has rarely been successful for just that reason. See Chen Brief 3–4. Since 2010, plaintiffs nationwide have apparently succeeded in fewer than ten §2 suits. Id., at 7. And “the only state legislative or congressional districts that were redrawn because of successful Section 2 challenges were a handful of state house districts near Milwaukee and Houston.” Id., at 7–8. By contrast, “[n]umerous lower courts” have upheld districting maps “where, due to minority populations’ geographic diffusion, plaintiffs couldn’t design an additional majority-minority district” or satisfy the compactness requirement. Id., at 15– 16 (collecting cases). The same has been true of recent litigation in this Court. See Abbott, 585 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 33–34) (finding a Texas district did not violate §2 because “the geography and demographics of south and west Texas do not permit the creation of any more than the seven Latino . . . districts that exist under the current plan”).4
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4 Despite this all, the dissent argues that courts have apparently been “methodically carving the country into racially designated electoral districts” for decades. Post, at 48 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). And that, the dissent inveighs, “should inspire us to repentance.” Ibid. But proportional representation of minority voters is absent from nearly every corner of this country despite §2 being in effect for over 40 years. And in case after case, we have rejected districting plans that would bring States closer to proportionality when those plans violate traditional districting criteria. See supra, at 19–21. It seems it is the dissent that is “quixotically joust[ing] with an imaginary adversary.” Post, at 47 (opinion of THOMAS, J.).
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Reapportionment, we have repeatedly observed, “is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State[s],” not the federal courts. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 21). Properly applied, the Gingles factors help ensure that remains the case. As respondents themselves emphasize, §2 “never require[s] adoption of districts that violate traditional redistricting principles.” Brief for Respondents in No. 21–1087, p. 3. Its exacting requirements, instead, limit judicial intervention to “those instances of intensive racial politics” where the “excessive role [of race] in the electoral process . . . den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.” Senate Report 33–34.
B
Although we are content to reject Alabama’s invitation to change existing law on the ground that the State misunderstands §2 and our decisions implementing it, we also address how the race-neutral benchmark would operate in practice. Alabama’s approach fares poorly on that score, which further counsels against our adopting it.
1
The first change to existing law that Alabama would require is prohibiting the illustrative maps that plaintiffs submit to satisfy the first Gingles precondition from being “based” on race. Brief for Alabama 56. Although Alabama is not entirely clear whether, under its view, plaintiffs’ illustrative plans must not take race into account at all or whether they must just not “prioritize” race, ibid., we see no reason to impose such a new rule.
When it comes to considering race in the context of districting, we have made clear that there is a difference “between being aware of racial considerations and being motivated by them.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 916; see also North Carolina v. Covington, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (per curiam) (slip op., at 8). The former is permissible; the latter
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is usually not. That is because “[r]edistricting legislatures will . . . almost always be aware of racial demographics,” Miller, 515 U. S., at 916, but such “race consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination,” Shaw, 509 U. S., at 646. Section 2 itself “demands consideration of race.” Abbott, 581 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). The question whether additional majority-minority districts can be drawn, after all, involves a “quintessentially race-conscious calculus.” De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1020.
At the same time, however, race may not be “the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless [there is] a compelling reason.” Cooper, 581 U. S., at 291. Race predominates in the drawing of district lines, our cases explain, when “race-neutral considerations [come] into play only after the race-based decision had been made.” Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 580 U. S. 178, 189 (2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). That may occur where “race for its own sake is the overriding reason for choosing one map over others.” Id., at 190
While the line between racial predominance and racial consciousness can be difficult to discern, see Miller, 515 U. S., at 916, it was not breached here. The Caster plaintiffs relied on illustrative maps produced by expert Bill Cooper. See 2 App. 591–592. Cooper testified that while it was necessary for him to consider race, he also took several other factors into account, such as compactness, contiguity, and population equality. Ibid. Cooper testified that he gave all these factors “equal weighting.” Id., at 594. And when asked squarely whether race predominated in his development of the illustrative plans, Cooper responded: “No. It was a consideration. This is a Section 2 lawsuit, after all. But it did not predominate or dominate.” Id., at 595.
The District Court agreed. It found “Cooper’s testimony highly credible” and commended Cooper for “work[ing] hard to give ‘equal weight[]’ to all traditional redistricting criteria.” 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1005–1006; see also id., at 978–
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979. The court also explained that Alabama’s evidence of racial predominance in Cooper’s maps was exceedingly thin. Alabama’s expert, Thomas Bryan, “testified that he never reviewed the exhibits to Mr. Cooper’s report” and “that he never reviewed” one of the illustrative plans that Cooper submitted. Id., at 1006. Bryan further testified that he could offer no “conclusions or opinions as to the apparent basis of any individual line drawing decisions in Cooper’s illustrative plans.” 2 App. 740. By his own admission, Bryan’s analysis of any race predominance in Cooper’s maps “was pretty light.” Id., at 739. The District Court did not err in finding that race did not predominate in Cooper’s maps in light of the evidence before it.5
The dissent contends that race nevertheless predominated in both Cooper’s and Duchin’s maps because they were designed to hit “‘express racial target[s]’”—namely, two “50%-plus majority-black districts.” Post, at 15 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (quoting Bethune-Hill, 580 U. S., at 192). This argument fails in multiple ways. First, the dissent’s reliance on Bethune-Hill is mistaken. In that case, this Court was unwilling to conclude that a State’s maps were produced in a racially predominant manner. Instead, we
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5 The dissent claims that Cooper “treated ‘the minority population in and of itself ’ as the paramount community of interest in his plans.” Post, at 14 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (quoting 2 App. 601). But Cooper testified that he was “aware that the minority population in and of itself can be a community of interest.” Id., at 601 (emphasis added). Cooper then explained that the relevant community of interest here—the Black Belt— was a “historical feature” of the State, not a demographic one. Ibid. (emphasis added). The Black Belt, he emphasized, was defined by its “historical boundaries”—namely, the group of “rural counties plus Montgomery County in the central part of the state.” Ibid. The District Court treated the Black Belt as a community of interest for the same reason.
The dissent also protests that Cooper’s “plans prioritized race over neutral districting criteria.” Post, at 14 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But as the District Court found, and as Alabama does not contest, Cooper’s maps satisfied other traditional criteria, such as compactness, contiguity, equal populations, and respect for political subdivisions.
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remanded for the lower court to conduct the predominance analysis itself, explaining that “the use of an express racial target” was just one factor among others that the court would have to consider as part of “[a] holistic analysis.” Id., at 192. JUSTICE THOMAS dissented in relevant part, contending that because “the legislature sought to achieve a [black voting-age population] of at least 55%,” race necessarily predominated in its decisionmaking. Id., at 198 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). But the Court did not join in that view, and JUSTICE THOMAS again dissents along the same lines today.
The second flaw in the dissent’s proposed approach is its inescapable consequence: Gingles must be overruled. According to the dissent, racial predominance plagues every single illustrative map ever adduced at the first step of Gingles. For all those maps were created with an express target in mind—they were created to show, as our cases require, that an additional majority-minority district could be drawn. That is the whole point of the enterprise. The upshot of the approach the dissent urges is not to change how Gingles is applied, but to reject its framework outright.
The contention that mapmakers must be entirely “blind” to race has no footing in our §2 case law. The line that we have long drawn is between consciousness and predominance. Plaintiffs adduced at least one illustrative map that comported with our precedents. They were required to do no more to satisfy the first step of Gingles.
2
The next condition Alabama would graft onto §2 is a requirement that plaintiffs demonstrate, at the totality of circumstances stage, that the State’s enacted plan contains fewer majority-minority districts than the race-neutral benchmark. Brief for Alabama 43. If it does not, then §2 should drop out of the picture. Id., at 44.
Alabama argues that is what should have happened here.
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It notes that one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Duchin, used an algorithm to create “2 million districting plans for Alabama . . . without taking race into account in any way in the generation process.” 2 App. 710. Of these two million “raceblind” plans, none contained two majority-black districts while many plans did not contain any. Ibid. Alabama also points to a “race-neutral” computer simulation conducted by another one of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Kosuke Imai, which produced 30,000 potential maps. Brief for Alabama 55. As with Dr. Duchin’s maps, none of the maps that Dr. Imai created contained two majority-black districts. See 2 App. 571–572. Alabama thus contends that because HB1 sufficiently “resembles” the “race-neutral” maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai—all of the maps lack two majority black districts—HB1 does not violate §2. Brief for Alabama 54.
Alabama’s reliance on the maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai is misplaced. For one, neither Duchin’s nor Imai’s maps accurately represented the districting process in Alabama. Dr. Duchin’s maps were based on old census data—from 2010 instead of 2020—and ignored certain traditional districting criteria, such as keeping together communities of interest, political subdivisions, or municipalities.6 And Dr. Imai’s 30,000 maps failed to incorporate Alabama’s own districting guidelines, including keeping together communities of interest and preserving municipal boundaries. See Supp. App. 58–59.7
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6 Dr. Duchin created her two million map sample as part of an academic article that she helped author, not for her work on this case, and the article was neither entered into evidence below nor made part of the record here. See 2 App. 710; see also M. Duchin & D. Spencer, Models, Race, and the Law, 130 Yale L. J. Forum 744, 763–764 (2021) (Duchin & Spencer).
7 The principal dissent decrees that Dr. Duchin’s and Dr. Imai’s maps are “surely probative,” forgiving the former’s use of stale census data as well as both mapmakers’ collective failure to incorporate many traditional districting guidelines. Post, at 23–24, and n. 14 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also post, at 15, n. 9, 16. In doing so, that dissent ignores Dr. Duchin’s testimony that—when using the correct census data—the “randomized algorithms” she employed “found plans with two majority black districts in literally thousands of different ways.” MSA 316–317. The principal dissent and the dissent by JUSTICE ALITO also ignore Duchin’s testimony that “it is certainly possible” to draw the illustrative maps she produced in a race-blind manner. 2 App. 713. In that way, even the race-blind standard that the dissents urge would be satisfied here. See post, at 21 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); post, at 6 (opinion of ALITO, J.). So too could that standard be satisfied in every §2 case; after all, as Duchin explained, any map produced in a deliberately race-predominant manner would necessarily emerge at some point in a random, race-neutral process. 2 App. 713. And although JUSTICE ALITO voices support for an “old-school approach” to §2, even that approach cannot be squared with his understanding of Gingles. Post, at 6. The very reason a plaintiff adduces a map at the first step of Gingles is precisely because of its racial composition—that is, because it creates an additional majority-minority district that does not then exist.
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But even if the maps created by Dr. Duchin and Dr. Imai were adequate comparators, we could not adopt the map comparison test that Alabama proposes. The test is flawed in its fundamentals. Districting involves myriad considerations—compactness, contiguity, political subdivisions, natural geographic boundaries, county lines, pairing of incumbents, communities of interest, and population equality. See Miller, 515 U. S., at 916. Yet “[q]uantifying, measuring, prioritizing, and reconciling these criteria” requires map drawers to “make difficult, contestable choices.” Brief for Computational Redistricting Experts as Amici Curiae 8 (Redistricting Brief ). And “[i]t is easy to imagine how different criteria could move the median map toward different . . . distributions,” meaning that “the same map could be [lawful] or not depending solely on what the mapmakers said they set out to do.” Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 27–28). For example, “the scientific literature contains dozens of competing metrics” on the issue of compactness. Redistricting Brief 8. Which one of these metrics should be used? What happens when
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the maps they produce yield different benchmark results? How are courts to decide?
Alabama does not say; it offers no rule or standard for determining which of these choices are better than others. Nothing in §2 provides an answer either. In 1982, the computerized mapmaking software that Alabama contends plaintiffs must use to demonstrate an (unspecified) level of deviation did not even exist. See, e.g., J. Chen & N. Stephanopoulos, The Race-Blind Future of Voting Rights, 130 Yale L. J. 862, 881–882 (2021) (Chen & Stephanopoulos). And neither the text of §2 nor the fraught debate that produced it suggests that “equal access” to the fundamental right of voting turns on computer simulations that are technically complicated, expensive to produce, and available to “[o]nly a small cadre of university researchers [that] have the resources and expertise to run” them. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28 (citing Chen & Stephanopoulos 882–884).8
One final point bears mentioning. Throughout these cases, Alabama has repeatedly emphasized that HB1 cannot have violated §2 because none of plaintiffs’ two million odd maps contained more than one majority-minority district. See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 1, 23, 30, 31, 54–56, 70, 79. The point is that two million is a very big number and that sheer volume matters. But as elsewhere, Alabama misconceives the math project that it expects courts to oversee. A brief submitted by three computational redistricting experts explains that the number of possible districting maps in Alabama is at least in the “trillion trillions.” Redistricting Brief 6, n. 7. Another publication reports that
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8 None of this is to suggest that algorithmic mapmaking is categorically irrelevant in voting rights cases. Instead, we note only that, in light of the difficulties discussed above, courts should exercise caution before treating results produced by algorithms as all but dispositive of a §2 claim. And in evaluating algorithmic evidence more generally in this context, courts should be attentive to the concerns we have discussed.
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the number of potential maps may be orders of magnitude higher: “the universe of all possible connected, population-balanced districting plans that satisfy the state’s requirements,” it explains, “is likely in the range of googols.” Duchin & Spencer 768. Two million maps, in other words, is not many maps at all. And Alabama’s insistent reliance on that number, however powerful it may sound in the abstract, is thus close to irrelevant in practice. What would the next million maps show? The next billion? The first trillion of the trillion trillions? Answerless questions all. See, e.g., Redistricting Brief 2 (“[I]t is computationally intractable, and thus effectively impossible, to generate a complete enumeration of all potential districting plans. [Even] algorithms that attempt to create a manageable sample of that astronomically large universe do not consistently identify an average or median map.”); Duchin & Spencer 768 (“[A] comprehensive survey of [all districting plans within a State] is impossible.”).
Section 2 cannot require courts to judge a contest of computers when there is no reliable way to determine who wins, or even where the finish line is.
3
Alabama’s final contention with respect to the race-neutral benchmark is that it requires plaintiffs to demonstrate that any deviations between the State’s enacted plan and race-neutral alternatives “can be explained only by racial discrimination.” Brief for Alabama 44 (emphasis added).
We again find little merit in Alabama’s proposal. As we have already explained, our precedents and the legislative compromise struck in the 1982 amendments clearly rejected treating discriminatory intent as a requirement for liability under §2. See, e.g., Chisom, 501 U. S., at 403–404; Shaw, 509 U. S., at 641; Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 481–482 (1997). Yet Alabama’s proposal is
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even more demanding than the intent test Congress jettisoned. Demonstrating discriminatory intent, we have long held, “does not require a plaintiff to prove that the challenged action rested solely on racially discriminatory purpose[].” Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 265 (1977) (emphasis added); see also Reno, 520 U. S., at 488. Alabama’s proposed approach stands in sharp contrast to all this, injecting into the effects test of §2 an evidentiary standard that even our purposeful discrimination cases eschew.
C
Alabama finally asserts that the Court should outright stop applying §2 in cases like these because the text of §2 does not apply to single-member redistricting and because §2 is unconstitutional as the District Court applied it here. We disagree on both counts.
Alabama first argues that §2 does not apply to singlemember redistricting. Echoing JUSTICE THOMAS’s concurrence in Holder v. Hall, Alabama reads §2’s reference to “standard, practice, or procedure” to mean only the “methods for conducting a part of the voting process that might . . . be used to interfere with a citizen’s ability to cast his vote.” 512 U. S., at 917–918 (opinion concurring in judgment). Examples of covered activities would include “registration requirements, . . . the locations of polling places, the times polls are open, the use of paper ballots as opposed to voting machines, and other similar aspects of the voting process.” Id., at 922. But not “a single-member districting system or the selection of one set of districting lines over another.” Id., at 923.
This understanding of §2 cannot be reconciled with our precedent. As recounted above, we have applied §2 to States’ districting maps in an unbroken line of decisions stretching four decades. See supra, at 11; see also Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___, n. 5 (slip op., at 7, n. 5) (collecting cases).
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In doing so, we have unanimously held that §2 and Gingles “[c]ertainly . . . apply” to claims challenging single-member districts. Growe, 507 U. S., at 40. And we have even invalidated portions of a State’s single-district map under §2. See LULAC, 548 U. S., at 427–429.9 Alabama’s approach would require “abandoning” this precedent, “overruling the interpretation of §2” as set out in nearly a dozen of our cases. Holder, 512 U. S., at 944 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). We decline to take that step. Congress is undoubtedly aware of our construing §2 to apply to districting challenges. It can change that if it likes. But until and unless it does, statutory stare decisis counsels our staying the course. See, e.g., Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 456 (2015).10
The statutory text in any event supports the conclusion that §2 applies to single-member districts. Alabama’s own proffered definition of a “procedure is the manner or method
____________
9 The dissent suggests that Growe does not support the proposition that §2 applies to single-member redistricting. Post, at 4–5 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). The Court has understood Growe much differently. See, e.g., Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U. S. 74, 90 (1997) (“Our decision in [Gingles] set out the basic framework for establishing a vote dilution claim against at-large, multimembers districts; we have since extended the framework to single-member districts.” (citing Growe, 507 U. S., at 40– 41)); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1006 (1994) (“In Growe, we held that a claim of vote dilution in a single-member district requires proof meeting the same three threshold conditions for a dilution challenge to a multimember district . . . .”); Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U. S. 1, 12 (plurality opinion) (“The Court later held that the three Gingles requirements apply equally in §2 cases involving single-member districts . . . .” (citing Growe, 507 U. S., at 40–41)).
10 JUSTICE ALITO argues that “[t]he Gingles framework should be [re]interpreted” in light of changing methods in statutory interpretation. Post, at 10 (dissenting opinion). But as we have explained, Gingles effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that §2 embodies. And statutory stare decisis counsels strongly in favor of not “undo[ing] . . . the compromise that was reached between the House and Senate when §2 was amended in 1982.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 22).
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of proceeding in a process or course of action.” Brief for Alabama 51 (internal quotation marks omitted). But the manner of proceeding in the act of voting entails determining in which districts voters will vote. The fact that the term “procedure” is preceded by the phrase “qualification or prerequisite to voting,” 52 U. S. C. §10301(a), does not change its meaning. It is hard to imagine many more fundamental “prerequisites” to voting than determining where to cast your ballot or who you are eligible to vote for. Perhaps for that reason, even Alabama does not bear the courage of its conviction on this point. It refuses to argue that §2 is inapplicable to multimember districting, though its textual arguments apply with equal force in that context.
The dissent, by contrast, goes where even Alabama does not dare, arguing that §2 is wholly inapplicable to districting because it “focuses on ballot access and counting” only. Post, at 2 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But the statutory text upon which the dissent relies supports the exact opposite conclusion. The relevant section provides that “[t]he terms ‘vote’ or ‘voting’ shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective.” Ibid. (quoting 52 U. S. C. §10310(c)(1); emphasis added). Those actions “includ[e], but [are] not limited to, . . . action[s] required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast.” §10310(c)(1). It would be anomalous to read the broad language of the statute—“all action necessary,” “including but not limited to”—to have the crabbed reach that JUSTICE THOMAS posits. And we have already discussed why determining where to cast a ballot constitutes a “prerequisite” to voting, as the statute requires.
The dissent also contends that “applying §2 to districting rests on systematic neglect of . . . the ballot-access focus of the 1960s’ voting-rights struggles.” Post, at 3 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But history did not stop in 1960. As we have explained, Congress adopted the amended §2 in response to
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the 1980 decision City of Mobile, a case about districting. And—as the dissent itself acknowledges—“Congress drew §2(b)’s current operative language” from the 1973 decision White v. Regester, post, at 4, n. 3 (opinion of THOMAS, J.), a case that was also about districting (in fact, a case that invalidated two multimember districts in Texas and ordered them redrawn into single-member districts, 412 U. S., at 765). This was not lost on anyone when §2 was amended. Indeed, it was the precise reason that the contentious debates over proportionality raged—debates that would have made little sense if §2 covered only poll taxes and the like, as the dissent contends.
We also reject Alabama’s argument that §2 as applied to redistricting is unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment. According to Alabama, that Amendment permits Congress to legislate against only purposeful discrimination by States. See Brief for Alabama 73. But we held over 40 years ago “that, even if §1 of the [Fifteenth] Amendment prohibits only purposeful discrimination, the prior decisions of this Court foreclose any argument that Congress may not, pursuant to §2 [of the Fifteenth Amendment] outlaw voting practices that are discriminatory in effect.” City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 173 (1980). The VRA’s “ban on electoral changes that are discriminatory in effect,” we emphasized, “is an appropriate method of promoting the purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment.” Id., at 177. As City of Rome recognized, we had reached the very same conclusion in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, a decision issued right after the VRA was first enacted. 383 U. S., at 308–309, 329–337; see also Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3).
Alabama further argues that, even if the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes the effects test of §2, that Amendment does not authorize race-based redistricting as a remedy for §2 violations. But for the last four decades, this Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly applied
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the effects test of §2 as interpreted in Gingles and, under certain circumstances, have authorized race-based redistricting as a remedy for state districting maps that violate §2. See, e.g., supra, at 11; cf. Mississippi Republican Executive Committee v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002 (1984). In light of that precedent, including City of Rome, we are not persuaded by Alabama’s arguments that §2 as interpreted in Gingles exceeds the remedial authority of Congress.
The concern that §2 may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the States is, of course, not new. See, e.g., Shaw, 509 U. S., at 657 (“Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.”). Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns. It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here.
* * *
The judgments of the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in the Caster case, and of the three-judge District Court in the Milligan case, are affirmed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, concurring in all but Part III–B–1.
I agree with the Court that Alabama’s redistricting plan violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act as interpreted in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). I write separately to emphasize four points.
First, the upshot of Alabama’s argument is that the Court should overrule Gingles. But the stare decisis standard for this Court to overrule a statutory precedent, as distinct from a constitutional precedent, is comparatively strict. Unlike with constitutional precedents, Congress and the President may enact new legislation to alter statutory precedents such as Gingles. In the past 37 years, however, Congress and the President have not disturbed Gingles, even as they have made other changes to the Voting Rights Act. Although statutory stare decisis is not absolute, “the
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Court has ordinarily left the updating or correction of erroneous statutory precedents to the legislative process.” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (slip op., at 4); see also, e.g., Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 456 (2015); Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172–173 (1989); Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U. S. 258, 283–284 (1972); Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 406 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).1
Second, Alabama contends that Gingles inevitably requires a proportional number of majority-minority districts, which in turn contravenes the proportionality disclaimer in §2(b) of the Voting Rights Act. 52 U. S. C. §10301(b). But Alabama’s premise is wrong. As the Court’s precedents make clear, Gingles does not mandate a proportional number of majority-minority districts. Gingles requires the creation of a majority-minority district only when, among other things, (i) a State’s redistricting map cracks or packs a large and “geographically compact” minority population and (ii) a plaintiff ’s proposed alternative map and proposed majority-minority district are “reasonably configured”—namely, by respecting compactness principles and other traditional districting criteria such as county, city, and town lines. See, e.g., Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 301–302 (2017); Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 153–154 (1993); ante, at 10–12, 18–22
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If Gingles demanded a proportional number of majority-minority districts, States would be forced to group together geographically dispersed minority voters into unusually shaped districts, without concern for traditional districting criteria such as county, city, and town lines. But Gingles and this Court’s later decisions have flatly rejected that approach. See, e.g., Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2018) (slip op., at 33–34); Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 979 (1996) (plurality opinion); Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50; see also Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 917–920 (1995); Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 644–649 (1993); ante, at 18–22.2
Third, Alabama argues that courts should rely on raceblind computer simulations of redistricting maps to assess whether a State’s plan abridges the right to vote on account of race. It is true that computer simulations might help detect the presence or absence of intentional discrimination. For example, if all of the computer simulations generated only one majority-minority district, it might be difficult to say that a State had intentionally discriminated on the basis of race by failing to draw a second majority-minority district.
But as this Court has long recognized—and as all Members of this Court today agree—the text of §2 establishes an effects test, not an intent test. See ante, at 17; post, at 7 (THOMAS, J., dissenting); post, at 16 (ALITO, J., dissenting). And the effects test, as applied by Gingles to redistricting, requires in certain circumstances that courts account for the race of voters so as to prevent the cracking or packing—whether intentional or not—of large
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and geographically compact minority populations. See Abbott, 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1006–1007, 1020 (1994); Voinovich, 507 U. S., at 153–154; see generally Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 22) (“§2 does not demand proof of discriminatory purpose”); Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 482 (1997) (Congress “clearly expressed its desire that §2 not have an intent component”); Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 923–924 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (§2 adopts a “‘results’ test, rather than an ‘intent’ test”); Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 394, 404 (1991) (“proof of intent is no longer required to prove a §2 violation” as “Congress made clear that a violation of §2 could be established by proof of discriminatory results alone”); Gingles, 478 U. S., at 71, n. 34 (plurality opinion) (§2 does not require “‘purpose of racial discrimination’”)
Fourth, Alabama asserts that §2, as construed by Gingles to require race-based redistricting in certain circumstances, exceeds Congress’s remedial or preventive authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As the Court explains, the constitutional argument presented by Alabama is not persuasive in light of the Court’s precedents. See ante, at 33–34; see also City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 177–178 (1980). JUSTICE THOMAS notes, however, that even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under §2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future. See post, at 44–45 (dissenting opinion). But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.
For those reasons, I vote to affirm, and I concur in all but Part III–B–1 of the Court’s opinion.
Allen v. Millifan (2026):
Allen v. Milligan (06/02/2026)
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[June 2, 2026]
Unsigned order
PER CURIAM.
In Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___ (2026), to resolve the tension between vote-dilution claims under §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and our colorblind Constitution, we updated the standards for §2 liability established by Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986).
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Under Gingles, to prove a §2 violation, a plaintiff must first establish three preconditions. First, the minority group must be large and geographically compact enough to be a majority in a reasonably configured congressional district, meaning that the district “comports with traditional districting criteria.” Callais, 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
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8) (internal quotation marks omitted). Second, the minority group must be politically cohesive. Third, the majority group must vote enough as a bloc to defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate. Ibid. After establishing those three preconditions, the plaintiff must prove that the political process was not equally open to minority voters based on the totality of the circumstances. Ibid.
Callais updated these standards. As relevant here, we held that for plaintiffs to satisfy the first Gingles precondition, a plaintiff ’s alternative map “must meet all the State’s legitimate districting objectives” “just as well” as the State’s own map. 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 29) (emphasis added). Those legitimate districting objectives, we held, include “the State’s specified political goals” and “any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution.” Ibid. A plaintiff also “cannot use race as a districting criterion” in preparing the alternative map. Ibid. To prove the second and third preconditions, a plaintiff “must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation” and “show that voters engage in racial bloc voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 30). These updates, we held, were necessary to avoid requiring congressional maps under §2 that would be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
After Callais, we vacated District Court injunctions that prevented the State of Alabama from using a congressional map that it enacted in 2023. See Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). The District Court had held that the State’s map violated §2 because it had only one district in which black voters were a majority and did not include an additional “[b]lack-opportunity” district. Singleton v. Allen, 782 F. Supp. 3d 1092, 1114, 1309 (ND Ala. 2025). The District Court also concluded that the 2023 map violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it constituted a deliberate “refus[al] to satisfy the remedial requirements” it previously
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imposed and an attempt to avoid a future judgment requiring the same remedy. Id., at 1355.
Two weeks after we vacated its injunction, the District Court entered another injunction on largely the same grounds. State officials immediately applied to this Court for a stay of this injunction.
At this preliminary stage, the State has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the District Court’s injunction. See Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, 607 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2025) (slip op., at 1–2). The State is likely to succeed on the merits as to both claims. As to intentional vote dilution, the District Court did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith, see Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 10 (2024), because it interpreted the State’s legal disagreement with the court’s earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus. Cf. Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579, 608–609 (2018). And, as to both claims, the District Court’s analysis departed from Callais. Under Callais, the District Court was required to deny relief unless the plaintiffs’ alternative map performed “just as well” with respect to all of the State’s constitutionally permissible districting criteria. 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 29). Yet, the District Court found a violation even though the plaintiffs’ alternative map would not perform just as well as to the State’s constitutionally permissible criteria of keeping together the Gulf Coast community of interest and avoiding the pairing of incumbents. The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 30).
The State has also made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favor it. We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not “alter the election rules on the eve of an election.
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Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, 589 U. S. 423, 424 (2020) (per curiam). Here, the District Court interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected. Its view that conducting the elections under court-imposed maps would be more convenient for the State was not a valid justification for that intervention. While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, ibid., States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.
The applications for stay presented to JUSTICE THOMAS and by him referred to the Court are granted. The May 26, 2026, order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, case Nos. 2:21–cv–1530 and 2:21–cv–1291 is stayed pending the timely docketing of the appeal in this Court. Should the jurisdictional statement be timely filed, this order shall remain in effect pending this Court’s action on the appeal. If the appeal is dismissed, or the judgment affirmed, this order shall terminate automatically. In the event jurisdiction is noted or postponed, this order will remain in effect pending the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The May 26, 2026, order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, case No. 2:21–cv–1536, is stayed pending the timely filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map that protects Black Alabamians’ right to vote and with which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians, that Alabama adopted in unashamed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this Court, and that will require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands
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of voters in just days at best, a task that Alabama previously represented would take months.
The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully dissent.
I
This is now the third time these cases have come before the Court. See Merrill v. Milligan, 595 U. S. ___ (2022); Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1 (2023); Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). Each turn reveals just how unconscionable the Court’s action is today.
This saga began in 2021, after Alabama adopted a new congressional map following the 2020 census. That map had only one majority-Black congressional district. Black Alabamians challenged this first map, alleging that it violated §2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U. S. C. §10301. A three-judge District Court agreed, holding that the map likely had a racially discriminatory effect and violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black Alabamians’ voting strength. It therefore ordered Alabama to adopt “a congressional redistricting plan that include[d] either an additional majority-Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.” Singleton v. Merrill, 582 F. Supp. 3d 924, 936 (ND Ala. 2022). The latter is commonly referred to as an “opportunity district.”
That injunction prompted the first trip to this Court. At the time, Alabama claimed to be in a predicament. The District Court had issued its injunction in January 2022, roughly four months ahead of Alabama’s primary election in May 2022. By Alabama’s telling, four months was not enough time to change congressional maps, so it sought a stay of the injunction from this Court, arguing that “this overhaul of Alabama’s congressional map at this late hour would require the last-minute reassignment of hundreds of
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thousands of voters to new districts.” Application in Merrill v. Milligan, O. T. 2021, No. 21A375, p. 38 (Merrill Application). This “chaos,” the State argued, would harm “not only the State,” but also “voters and candidates across the State.” Ibid.
This Court granted the stay. Merrill, 595 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). It also agreed to review the District Court’s order and remedy. See ibid. Two Members of this Court expressed concern that “[t]he District Court’s order would require heroic efforts by . . . state and local authorities in the next few weeks—and even heroic efforts likely would not be enough to avoid chaos and confusion.” Id., at ___ (KAVANAUGH, J., joined by ALITO, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3). Thus, this Court allowed the map that the District Court held unlawful to govern the 2022 election.
Then, 18 months later, after full merits briefing and argument, this Court affirmed the District Court’s order and finding of discriminatory effect, concluding that the District Court had “faithfully applied our precedents and correctly determined that” Alabama’s congressional map unlawfully discriminated against Black Alabamians. Allen, 599 U. S., at 23. As to the District Court’s ordered remedy, the Court rejected Alabama’s objections that drawing a second opportunity district would offend the Constitution, writing that “a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before” the Court “d[id] not bear . . . out” the State’s objections. Id., at 42.
On remand, and under the District Court’s order that this Court had just affirmed, Alabama was given the opportunity to remedy the Voting Rights Act violation. Alabama did not rise to the occasion. Rather than adopt a map with the second district that this Court had just held was required to remedy unlawful racial discrimination, Alabama doubled down, adopting the 2023 Redistricting Plan, which also lacked a second opportunity district. Plaintiffs then amended their complaints in these cases to challenge the
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2023 Redistricting Plan, and the District Court held an 11- day trial on the legality of the new map. It heard testimony from 51 witnesses, received almost 800 exhibits, and considered many volumes of written submissions. At the end of that trial, the District Court concluded once again that Alabama’s failure to draw a second opportunity district had a discriminatory effect. It then found that Alabama had not merely “refuse[d] to satisfy” its prior order to remedy racially discriminatory vote dilution, but in fact had gone out of its way to make it “mathematically impossible” to do so. Singleton v. Allen, 782 F. Supp. 3d 1092, 1355 (ND Ala. 2025). “[W]ith great reluctance and dismay and even greater restraint,” the District Court concluded that Alabama had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by entrenching racially discriminatory vote dilution and permanently enjoined Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan. Id., at 1118. The District Court instituted a remedial map drawn without any reference to race. This map governed the 2024 election.
Alabama then filed its second appeal to this Court. While that appeal was pending, this Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). Although Callais significantly changed the test for discriminatory-effect vote-dilution claims under §2 of the Voting Rights Act, it also purported not to “overrul[e] Allen.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 36). Nor did Callais alter the analysis for intentional-discrimination claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. Still, the Court vacated the District Court’s injunction in these cases and remanded for further consideration in light of Callais. Caster, 608 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 1–2). That vacatur restored Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan just one week before Alabama’s primary election while voting was already under way. Id., at ___ (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 4).
After this Court’s order, Alabama announced that it intended to use the 2023 Redistricting Plan for the upcoming
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election and took the unusual step of splitting its congressional primary. In the three congressional districts unaffected by the change in congressional map, the May 19 primary election went ahead as scheduled. In the other four districts, voters still cast their ballots. Their votes for Congress, however, did not count. Instead, Alabama’s Legislature passed a law permitting the Governor to call a special primary election in the four congressional districts whose lines changed as a result of this Court’s order, and the Governor set that election for August 11.
Back in the District Court, plaintiffs immediately sought an emergency hearing following this Court’s order. The District Court held one, and less than three weeks later, it issued a preliminary injunction after “fully revisit[ing] the merits of each claim” brought by plaintiffs. ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (2026), 1 App. 28. In a thorough 78-page opinion, it explained that its prior decision on intentional racial discrimination was “undisturbed by Callais” and that, even after “draw[ing] every inference . . . in the Legislature’s favor,” the record compelled the conclusion that the State intentionally entrenched the racial discrimination that the District Court previously found and this Court affirmed. Id., at 29, 31. From here, the District Court reinstated the remedial map that this Court vacated.
II
Alabama has now returned to this Court again, seeking a stay of the District Court’s second preliminary injunction in these cases. The Court should deny Alabama’s request. Alabama has not shown that the District Court erred in holding that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their Fourteenth Amendment claim. See Hollingsworth v. Perry, 558 U. S. m183, 190 (2010) (per curiam). Furthermore, the State has no legitimate interest in enforcing an unconstitutional map, while vast harms will likely arise from upending the
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status quo, sowing chaos in Alabama, and rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship.
A
To prevail on their Fourteenth Amendment challenge, plaintiffs were required to show that Alabama enacted the 2023 Redistricting Plan “‘as a purposeful device to minimize or cancel out the voting potential of racial or ethnic minorities.’” Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 38 (2024) (quoting Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995)). That claim has two elements: discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose. Alexander, 602 U. S., at 39. Alabama has not shown that the District Court erred on either element.1
To begin, this Court has already held that the discriminatory-effect element is satisfied in these cases. Again, following the 2020 census, Alabama drew a congressional map with a single majority-Black district. The District Court concluded that the map violated §2 of the Voting Rights Act, and this Court “agree[d].” Allen, 599 U. S., at 19. Callais later changed the standard for §2 liability, but Callais also made clear that it did “not overrul[e] Allen.” 608 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 32, 36). As I have explained, “[t]hese cases are, of course, Allen,” so if the majority meant what it said in Callais and “Allen is good law . . . , then it must be good law here.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 4). “This Court’s finding of racially discriminatory vote dilution is an inextricable, permanent feature of this case,” id., at ___ (slip op., at 4), and it establishes that, as a matter of law, Alabama’s failure to draw a second opportunity district has a discriminatory effect.
——————
1 Because the District Court held that its post-trial finding of intentional discrimination was “undisturbed by Callais,” ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (2026), 1 App. 29, and made substantially similar findings in its preliminary-injunction opinion, I discuss the District Court’s post-trial and preliminary-injunction opinions together.
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Next, the District Court did not clearly err when concluding that Alabama acted with discriminatory purpose. The plaintiffs were required to demonstrate that race was “a motivating factor” in the adoption of the 2023 Redistricting Plan; they were not required to prove that it was the “sol[e],” “‘dominant,’” or even “‘primary’” motivation. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 265–266 (1977); see Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 66–74 (1980) (applying Arlington Heights to claim for intentional vote dilution). The District Court’s finding of discriminatory intent is reviewed for clear error, meaning that its factual determination “must govern” if it is “‘plausible’ in light of the full record.” Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 293 (2017)).
The District Court’s account of the evidence here is more than plausible. The record is bereft of evidence suggesting that Alabama took seriously this Court’s finding of discriminatory vote dilution in Allen. Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives Nathaniel Ledbetter put it bluntly: “‘If you think about where we were, the Supreme Court ruling [in Allen] was five to four. So there’s just one judge that needed to see something different.’” Singleton, 782 F. Supp. 3d, at 1348. That admission, the District Court observed, suggests “that Speaker Ledbetter was not focused on trying to remedy likely vote dilution” when the Alabama Legislature passed the 2023 Redistricting Plan. Ibid.
The record instead supports the understanding that Alabama was focused on pulling out all the stops to “entrench” the dilution of Black votes found by the District Court and affirmed by this Court. Id., at 1345. Most importantly, the events leading up to the adoption of the 2023 Redistricting Plan were “replete with sharp departures from (and some outright conflicts with) Alabama’s traditional districting guidelines,” as the State fashioned redistricting criteria from whole cloth that it had never previously employed.
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Id., at 1343; see id., at 1343–1344. The State, the District Court found, also conjured legislative findings out of “thin air,” id., at 1345, in “the dead of night,” id., at 1117, that “exalt[ed]” certain White communities while “remaining silent on the heritage of all other communities of interest in Alabama (including the Black Belt),” id., at 1344. The District Court observed that this “constellation of departures from the norm,” id., at 1345, created a set of redistricting rules that made it “mathematically impossible to create [the] second opportunity district” that Alabama had been ordered to draw, id., at 1340; see id., at 1356–1357. In short, the record reflects “that Alabama made an intentional choice to . . . entrench, rather than remedy and uproot, the racial discrimination that the District Court had previously found and that this Court had affirmed.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 3).
Furthermore, there is minimal evidence that partisanship entered the calculus. The State’s redistricting criteria omitted any mention of partisanship. ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, 1 App. 45. Neither of the legislators who led the redistricting process testified that they drew the 2023 redistricting plan for partisan reasons. Ibid. Neither legislator gave any weight to partisan interests, despite being urged to do so by former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Ibid. Moreover, although the State professed to be concerned with protecting incumbents, the only evidence in the record on this point shows that this interest was not partisan, but extended to all incumbents, including Terri Sewell, the State’s only incumbent Democrat as of 2023. Id., at ___, 1 App. 46. The thin factual record is especially notable given that this round of redistricting took place four years after Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684 (2019), in which this Court held that federal courts cannot hear challenges to partisan gerrymanders. Id., at 718. That means that the Alabama Legislature had every incentive to dress up its
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redistricting effort in partisan garb. It is telling that it barely managed a fig leaf.
The District Court also more than adequately accounted for the presumption of legislative good faith. Contra, ante, at 3. That principle “directs district courts to draw the inference that cuts in the legislature’s favor when confronted with evidence that could plausibly support multiple conclusions.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 10. In its post-trial opinion, the District Court did just that and more. “[I]n extreme service of the presumption of . . . good faith,” the District Court assumed the best of Alabama’s Legislature and “discount[ed] [its] concerns about” the “historical background and sequence of events” leading up to the adoption of the 2023 Redistricting Plan. Singleton, 782 F. Supp. 3d, at 1346. Similarly, when it reaffirmed its intentional-discrimination holding in its preliminary-injunction order, the District Court “dr[e]w every inference [it could] in the Legislature’s favor, [made] no effort to read anyone’s mind, and accuse[d] no legislator of racism.” ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, 1 App. 31. Those were not empty promises: The District Court declined to consider “Alabama’s history of discriminating against Black Alabamians,” even though it is “well documented,” to “give the Legislature every benefit of the doubt.” Id., at ___, 1 App. 32. It also gave “no weight” to contemporaneous statements from minority legislators regarding the legislature’s intentions. Id., at ___, n. 15, 1 App. 40, n. 15.
The reason the District Court found intentional discrimination even after affording such deference to the Alabama Legislature is simple: The record is crystal clear. Even if Alabama may have unintentionally drawn the first racially discriminatory map, when it later adopted redistricting criteria that made it mathematically impossible to remedy racial discrimination, the District Court drew the obvious (and certainly not implausible) inference that Alabama intended to discriminate. If the District Court clearly erred
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by doing so, then there is no realistic case in which the presumption of legislative good faith can ever be rebutted.
The majority’s order grapples with virtually none of this. Indeed, it does not even acknowledge that the District Court’s discriminatory-intent finding is reviewed for clear error. Much of its reasoning rests on its assertion that, even as to the plaintiffs’ Fourteenth Amendment claim, “the District Court’s analysis departed from Callais.” Ante, at 3. That is wrong twice over. First, Callais “said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional discrimination claims.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 4). Instead, Callais was focused on changing the Court’s law on “exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands,” not what the Constitution demands. 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19). Second, Callais said that its newly fashioned test for §2 disparate impact claims is not an intent-based test. It acknowledged that §2 “does not demand a finding of intentional discrimination.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 23). It also denied JUSTICE KAGAN’s charge that the majority’s new test was an intent test in all but name. Id., at ____ (slip op., at 35). It is hard to see how the District Court’s finding of discriminatory intent under the Fourteenth Amendment could have departed from an opinion that purported to say nothing about how to find discriminatory intent under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s apparently oblivious insistence to the contrary today cannot be squared with what Callais said on its face just over one month ago. See id., at ___, n. 5 (KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 25, n. 5) (“[T]he majority closes its opinion by suggesting it is not requiring a vote dilution plaintiff to present evidence of ‘discriminatory intent.’ Which, if true, would be welcome news” (citation omitted)).
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B
In addition to being wrong on the merits, the Court’s decision inflicts two grave harms on the public. It debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians. It also corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.
1
First, the Court’s decision will cause havoc. The so-called “Purcell principle” “generally holds that, because latebreaking changes to election procedures can cause chaos, federal courts should hesitate before exercising their equitable discretion to alter state election laws close to an election.” Malliotakis v. Williams, 607 U. S. ___, ___ (2026) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 10). Today’s decision tramples on that principle of restraint.
As the District Court explained, the path of least change in Alabama is keeping the District Court’s remedial plan in place. According to Alabama Director of Elections Jeff Elrod, all voters in Alabama are currently assigned in county-level voter rolls to congressional districts based on the remedial map that the District Court previously ordered and that the State used for the 2024 election cycle. 2 App. 135. To run an election using the remedial map, then, the State need not make any changes to its voter rolls or change the status quo.
To switch to the 2023 Redistricting Plan now, however, county elections officials will have to reassign hundreds of thousands of voters across the State to new congressional districts. Three of Alabama’s counties will be particularly hard hit because they are split across two congressional districts. 2 App. 121–122. These counties have about 600,000
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registered voters between them (roughly 15% of the State’s total number of registered voters).2
Elrod testified below that county elections officials would have to reassign those 600,000 voters manually. “The system,” he explained, “is not automatic” and “requires manual input” from elections officials who must “physically manually interface with the system.” Id., at 146. Reassigning voters in precincts split across two districts is particularly complicated, he continued, as it “cannot be done with a simple click” and instead requires officials to check street-level data to determine how to assign individual voters. Id., at 156–157. Worse yet, Elrod warned that reassigning voters requires using complicated computer software that officials must be trained to use, as “most of the counties’ registrars are not tech savvy” and “registrars are the only ones who can make the changes . . . to a voter’s record.” Id., at 147– 148. This process also requires many prechecks and backend quality control steps, all of which add to its time-intensive nature. Id., at 140.
Given these complexities, the process for reassigning voters typically takes months. Alabama knows (or at least knew) this. In 2021, at the first preliminary-injunction stage in these cases, Alabama filed a declaration from Elrod’s predecessor representing that voter reassignment “can take a county’s Board of Registrars 3 to 4 months to accomplish.” ECF Doc. 82–7, p. 4.3 For example, after the Alabama Legislature redrew its state legislative districts in 2017 following litigation, “local election officials struggled to complete the district assignment process in up to 4 months.” Ibid.
——————
2 Alabama Secretary of State, Voter Registration Statistics—2026, https://www.sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/election-data/2026- 05/ALVR-2026.xlsx (archived at https://perma.cc/6QHZ-7GFC).
3 ECF citations are to documents filed in the District Court in Milligan v. Allen, No. 2:21–cv–1530 (ND Ala.)
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Here, county officials do not have four months. When Alabama filed these applications on May 27, they had just seven days. Elrod explained that voter rolls were locked throughout the State following the State’s May 19 primary election, meaning that county officials could not reassign any voters to their new congressional districts under the 2023 Redistricting Plan for the August 11 special primary election. ECF Doc. 530–1, p. 17. The rolls were unlocked on May 27, but they are set to lock again today, June 2, ahead of Alabama’s primary runoff election on June 16. As a result, county officials in the three most heavily impacted counties in Alabama had at best just seven days to reassign 600,000 voters by hand. The two smaller counties, which are together responsible for reassigning 100,000 voters, each have just three elections officials who can make these changes. 2 App. 122. Mistakes will inevitably occur, as overworked elections officials sprint around the clock to make all the necessary changes. Even then, the officials may fall short. As far as Elrod is aware, no county in Alabama that was split under a redistricting plan has ever managed to complete voter reassignment in just seven days. See id., at 181.4
It now appears that county officials have just hours left, if that. Because the District Court’s injunction remained in place while these applications were pending, it is unclear if county officials began reassigning voters or if they were awaiting a decision from this Court. Indeed, Alabama, while conceding “it is true that time is tight,” suggested that
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4 Elrod testified that the voter rolls are locked by a third-party vendor immediately before and during an election. See 2 App. 136–140. The rolls remain locked until votes are canvassed seven days after the election unless there is a challenge to the election results. Id., at 206. As a result, even if the State can require the vendor to unlock the voter rolls when they were otherwise set to be locked, it seems likely that would cause even more confusion and undermine the administration of an active, ongoing election.
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voter reassignment has not yet begun. Reply 5; see ibid. (noting that reassignment “was set to begin on May 27”). If in fact reassignment has not begun, then elections officials may have only a few hours to make all the needed changes. The Court nonetheless stays the District Court’s injunction and orders the 2023 Redistricting Plan into place, even though it knows full well that “it will take a chaotic, decentralized, and Herculean effort” to make all the necessary changes. ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, 1 App. 8.
In response, Alabama asserts that it is the lower court that violated Purcell because it was “the Legislature’s and the Governor’s choice” to inflict these harms. Application for Stay 35. Alabama’s weaponization of Purcell ignores half the story. Until roughly three weeks ago, the District Court’s remedial plan had governed in Alabama for more than two years. Then, this Court vacated the District Court’s injunction and restored the 2023 Redistricting Plan. Although Alabama chose to use the 2023 Redistricting Plan for this election following this Court’s decision, the fact remains that this Court allowed this change to go forward. Now, the Court is being presented with a choice. It can use its equitable authority to fix the mess it has created, or it can use that same authority to deepen it further. The answer is clear: No principle of either law or equity requires the Court to perpetuate disruption instead of preventing it.
2
Second, the Court should not have rewarded Alabama’s defiance of court orders and blatant gamesmanship throughout this litigation. It is long established that “‘he who comes into equity must come with clean hands.’” Precision Instrument Mfg. Co. v. Automotive Maintenance Machinery Co., 324 U. S. 806, 814 (1945). Under this principle, to obtain equitable relief like a stay pending appeal, a movant must “have acted fairly and without fraud or deceit as to the controversy in issue.” Id., at 814–815; see New
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Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U. S. 742, 749 (2001) (“‘[A]bsent any good explanation, a party should not be allowed to gain an advantage by litigation on one theory, and then seek an inconsistent advantage by pursuing an incompatible theory’”). Alabama’s hands, however, are far from clean. Instead, it defied the District Court’s order in these cases even after this Court affirmed it, and took utterly irreconcilable positions at different stages in these cases to suit its own purposes.
First, Alabama intentionally chose to flout a preliminary injunction that this Court affirmed in Allen. Again, the District Court’s preliminary injunction (affirmed by this Court) expressly ordered Alabama to draw a second district in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. See Singleton, 782 F. Supp. 3d, at 1125; supra, at 2. Yet the State staunchly refused to do so and instead did everything it could to make it impossible to draw such a district.
Of course, Alabama had every right to raise its “legal disagreement,” ante, at 3, with the District Court’s original preliminary injunction through the appellate process or otherwise. The course of action the State chose here, however, was not the proper way of doing so. Had Alabama complied with the preliminary injunction and drawn a map with a second opportunity district, it could have relitigated the merits in the ordinary course: first at a trial on the merits, and then on appeal. At either stage, it could have raised the arguments that the litigants in Callais raised and prevailed on, or advanced challenges to the District Court’s remedial order. Instead, Alabama willfully drew a map that flouted the District Court’s preliminary injunction and hoped that this Court would eventually see things its way. After today, it is hard to call Alabama’s cynical gambit anything other than a success, and the Court’s rewarding of Alabama’s behavior anything other than a blow to the rule of law.
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Second, Alabama has taken wildly inconsistent positions on how much time it needs to implement a new redistricting plan throughout these cases, which suggests it is attempting to game this Court’s emergency docket through shifting positions on the equities. As noted above, Alabama previously sang a very different tune. In January 2022, it asked the District Court to stay its initial preliminary injunction in these cases. See ECF Doc. 110. In its motion, the State complained that changing its congressional districts four months before Alabama’s primary election that year “thr[ew] the [2022] election into chaos” and left “almost no time for maps to be redrawn, hundreds of thousands of voters to be reassigned to new districts, and thousands of new signatures to be obtained by candidates and political organizations seeking ballot access.” Id., at 20. Alabama continued: “To pull the rug out from . . . candidates and their voters in the run-up to an election requires extraordinary justification,” for “‘elections are complex to administer, and the public interest is not served by a chaotic, last-minute reordering of districts.’” Id., at 21 (alterations omitted). The State made similar arguments to this Court when it successfully sought a stay following the District Court’s denial. See Merrill Application 38 (citing “the last-minute reassignment of hundreds of thousands of voters to new districts” as imposing significant “harms not only [on] the State,” but also on “voters and candidates”).
If all the above was true in 2022, then it is also true in 2026. Alabama, however, no longer seems to think so. What was previously impossible to achieve in four months is suddenly possible to achieve in less than one week, as concerns about the administrative burdens associated with “the last-minute reassignment of hundreds of thousands of voters to new districts,” ibid., have apparently melted away. A State that once decried pulling the rug out from under voters, elections officials, and candidates now seems determined to do just that. The Court should not reward
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such gamesmanship, especially when it accepted Alabama’s arguments in granting Alabama a stay in 2022. See Merrill, 595 U. S., at ___ (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (noting that “even heroic efforts” by elections officials “likely would not be enough to avoid chaos and confusion”).
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Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s injunction in these cases would “unleash chaos and . . . confuse voters.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 4). Nevertheless, the Court forged ahead. Now the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it has caused and the harm it has wrought. Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.
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