Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/74

Rh plan could better approximate proportional control? In this approach, proportionality is the ultimate benchmark, and the first Gingles precondition becomes a proxy for whether that benchmark is reasonably attainable in practice.

Beneath all the trappings of the Gingles framework, that two-part test describes how the District Court applied §2 here. The gravitational force of proportionality is obvious throughout its opinion. At the front end, the District Court even built proportionality into its understanding of Gingles’ first precondition, finding the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps to be reasonably configured in part because they “provide[d] a number of majority-Black districts … roughly proportional to the Black percentage of the population.” 582 F. Supp. 3d, at 1016. At the back end, the District Court concluded its “totality” analysis by revisiting proportionality and finding that it “weigh[ed] decidedly in favor of the plaintiffs.” Id., at 1025. While the District Court disclaimed giving overriding significance to proportionality, the fact remains that nothing else in its reasoning provides a logical nexus to its finding of a districting wrong and a need for a districting remedy. Finally, as if to leave no doubt about its implicit benchmark, the court admonished the State that “any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close.” Id., at 1033. In sum, the District Court’s thinly disguised benchmark was proportionality: Black Alabamians are about two-sevenths of the State’s population, so they should control two of the State’s seven congressional seats.

That was error—perhaps an understandable error given the limitations of the Gingles framework, but error nonetheless. As explained earlier, any principled application of §2 to cases such as these requires a meaningfully race-neutral benchmark. The benchmark cannot be an a priori thumb on the scale for racially proportional control.