Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/78

Rh statutory text and its “equal openness” requirement, the majority asserts that “[a] district is not equally open … 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.” But again, we have held that dilution cannot be shown without an objective, undiluted benchmark, and this verbiage offers no guidance for how to determine it. Later, the majority asserts that “the Gingles framework itself imposes meaningful constraints on proportionality.” But the only constraint on proportionality the majority articulates is that it is often difficult to achieve—which, quite obviously, is no principled limitation at all.

Thus, the end result of the majority’s reasoning is no different from the District Court’s: The ultimate benchmark is a racially proportional allocation of seats, and the main question on which liability turns is whether a closer approximation to proportionality is possible under any reasonable application of traditional districting criteria. This