Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/86

Rh inquiry, a court applying §2 can always embroider its vote-dilution determination with findings about past or present unconstitutional discrimination. But this possibility does nothing to heal either the fundamental contradictions between §2 and the Constitution or its extreme overbreadth relative to actual constitutional wrongs. “A generalized assertion of past discrimination” cannot justify race-based redistricting, “because it provides no guidance for a legislative body to determine the precise scope of the injury it seeks to remedy.” Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 909 (internal quotation marks omitted). To justify a statute tending toward the proportional allocation of political power by race throughout the Nation, it cannot be enough that a court can recite some indefinite quantum of discrimination in the relevant jurisdiction. If it were, courts “could uphold [race-based] remedies that are ageless in their reach into the past, and timeless in their ability to affect the future.” Wygant v. ''Jackson Bd. of Ed.'', 476 U. S. 267, 276 (1986) (plurality opinion). That logic “would effectively assure that race will always be relevant in [redistricting], and that the ultimate goal of eliminating entirely from governmental decisionmaking such irrelevant factors as a human being’s race will never be achieved.” Parents Involved, 551 U. S., at 730 (plurality opinion) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted).

For an example of these baleful results, we need look no further than the congressional districts at issue here. In 1992, Alabama and a group of §2 plaintiffs, whom a federal court chose to regard as the representatives “of all African-American citizens of the State of Alabama,” stipulated that the State’s black population was “ ‘sufficiently compact and contiguous to comprise a single member significant majority (65% or more) African American Congressional district,’ ” and that, “ ‘[c]onsequently,’ ” such a “ ‘district should be created.’ ” Wesch v. Hunt, 785 F. Supp. 1491, 1493, 1498 (SD Ala.). Accepting that stipulation, the court reworked