Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

24 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

Opinion of the Court 

  That requirement also would have the potential to inval-
idate just about any voting rule a State adopts.  Take the 
example  of  a  State’s  interest  in  preventing  voting  fraud.  
Even  if  a  State  could  point  to  a  history  of  serious  voting 
fraud within its own borders, the dissent would apparently 
strike  down  a  rule  designed  to  prevent  fraud  unless  the 
State could demonstrate an inability to combat voting fraud 
in any other way, such as by hiring more investigators and 
prosecutors,  prioritizing  voting  fraud  investigations,  and 
heightening criminal penalties.  Nothing about equal open-
ness  and  equal  opportunity  dictates  such  a  high  bar  for 
States to pursue their legitimate interests. 
  With  all  other  circumstances  swept  away,  all  that  re-
mains in the dissent’s approach is the size of any disparity 
in a rule’s impact on members of protected groups.  As we 

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the Court hypothesized a case involving an “uncouth” district shaped like 
the one in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 340 (1960), for which an 
inquiry under §2 “would at least arguably be required.”  501 U. S., at 427.  
The Court then wrote the language upon which the dissent seizes:  “Plac-
ing elections for single-member offices entirely beyond the scope of cov-
erage of §2 would preclude such an inquiry, even if the State’s interest 
in maintaining the ‘uncouth’ electoral system was trivial or illusory and 
even if any resulting impairment of a minority group’s voting strength 
could be remedied without significantly impairing the State’s interest in 
electing judges on a district-wide basis.”  Id., at 427–428. 
  That  reductio  ad  absurdum,  used  to  demonstrate  only  why  an  auto-
matic exemption from §2 scrutiny was inappropriate, did not announce 
an “inquiry” at all—much less the least-burdensome-means requirement 
the dissent would have us smuggle in from materially different statutory 
regimes.  Post, at 18, n. 5, 26.  Perhaps that is why no one—not the par-
ties, not the United States, not the 36 other amici, not the courts below, 
and certainly not this Court in subsequent decisions—has advanced the 
dissent’s surprising reading of a single phrase in Houston Lawyers Assn.  
The  dissent  apparently  thinks  that  in  1991  we  silently  abrogated  the 
principle that the nature of a State’s interest is but one of many factors 
to  consider, see  Thornburg  v.  Gingles,  478  U. S.  30,  44–45  (1986), and 
that our subsequent cases have erred by failing simply to ask whether a 
less burdensome measure would suffice.  Who knew?