Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/88

Rh 657. We indulge the pernicious tendency of assigning Americans to “creditor” and “debtor race[s],” even to the point of redistributing political power on that basis. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 239 (1995) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). We ensure that the race-based redistricting we impose on Alabama now will bear divisive consequences long into the future, just as the initial creation of District 7 segregated Jefferson County for decades and minted the template for crafting black “political homelands” in Alabama. Holder, 512 U. S., at 905 (opinion of ). We place States in the impossible position of having to weigh just how much racial sorting is necessary to avoid the “competing hazards” of violating §2 and violating the Constitution. Abbott, 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have even put ourselves in the ridiculous position of “assuming” that compliance with a statute can excuse disobedience to the Constitution. Worst of all, by making it clear that there are political dividends to be gained in the discovery of new ways to sort voters along racial lines, we prolong immeasurably the day when the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race” is no more. LULAC, 548 U. S., at 511 (, concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part). To the extent §2 requires any of this, it is unconstitutional.

The majority deflects this conclusion by appealing to two of our older Voting Rights Act cases, City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156 (1980), and South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, that did not address §2 at all and, indeed, predate Congress’ adoption of the results test. That maneuver is untenable. Katzenbach upheld §5’s preclearance requirements, §4(b)’s original coverage formula, and other related provisions aimed at “a small number of States and political subdivisions” where “systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment” had long been