Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/92

Rh single-member districting plan is not a “voting qualification,” a “prerequsiteprerequisite [sic] to voting,” or a “standard, practice, or procedure,” as the Act uses those terms. One way or another, the District Court should be reversed.

The majority goes to great lengths to decline all of these options and, in doing so, to fossilize all of the worst aspects of our long-deplorable vote-dilution jurisprudence. The majority recites Gingles’ shopworn phrases as if their meaning were self-evident, and as if it were not common knowledge that they have spawned intractable difficulties of definition and application. It goes out of its way to reaffirm §2’s applicability to single-member districting plans both as a purported original matter and on highly exaggerated stare decisis grounds. It virtually ignores Alabama’s primary argument—that, whatever the benchmark is, it must be race neutral—choosing, instead, to quixotically joust with an imaginary adversary. In the process, it uses special pleading to close the door on the hope cherished by some thoughtful observers, see Gonzalez, 535 F. 3d, at 599–600, that computational redistricting methods might offer a principled, race-neutral way out of the thicket Gingles carried us into. Finally, it dismisses grave constitutional questions with an insupportably broad holding based on demonstrably inapposite cases.

I find it difficult to understand these maneuvers except as proceeding from a perception that what the District Court did here is essentially no different from what many courts have done for decades under this Court’s superintendence, joined with a sentiment that it would be unthinkable to disturb that approach to the Voting Rights Act in any way. I share the perception, but I cannot understand the sentiment. It is true that, “under our direction, federal