Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 57.0

12 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

two  majority-minority  congressional  districts”—roughly 
proportional control.  1 App. 135 (emphasis added); see also 
id., at 314 (“Plaintiffs seek an order . . . ordering a congres-
sional redistricting plan that includes  two majority-Black 
congressional districts”). 
  Remarkably, the majority fails to acknowledge that two 
minority-controlled  districts  would  mean  proportionality, 
or  even  that  black  Alabamians  are  about  two-sevenths  of 
the State.  Yet that context is critical to the issues before 
us, not least because it explains the extent of the racial sort-
ing  the  plaintiffs’  goal  would  require.    “[A]s  a  matter  of 
mathematics,” single-member districting “tends to deal out 
representation  far  short  of  proportionality  to  virtually  all 
minorities,  from  environmentalists  in  Alaska  to  Republi-
cans in Massachusetts.”  M. Duchin & D. Spencer, Models, 
Race,  and  the  Law,  130  Yale  L. J.  Forum  744,  752 (2021) 
(Duchin & Spencer).  As such, creating two majority-black 
districts would require Alabama to aggressively “sort voters 
on the basis of race.”  Wisconsin Legislature, 595 U. S., at 
___ (slip op., at 2). 
  The plaintiffs’ 11 illustrative maps make that clear.  All 
11 maps refashion existing District 2 into a majority-black 
district while preserving the current black majority in Dis-
trict  7.    They  all  follow  the  same  approach:  Starting with 
majority-black areas of populous Montgomery County, they 

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heart of urban Birmingham.  See Supp. App. 207–208.  Of the Jefferson 
County residents captured by the “finger,” 75.48% were black.  Wesch, 
785 F. Supp., at 1569.  In the southeast, District 7 swallowed a jigsaw-
shaped  portion  of  Montgomery  County,  the  residents  of  which  were 
80.18% black.  Id., at 1575.  Three years later, in Miller v. Johnson, 515 
U. S. 900, 923–927 (1995), we rejected the “max-black” policy as unwar-
ranted by §5 and inconsistent with the Constitution.  But “much damage 
to  the  States’  congressional  and  legislative  district  maps  had  already 
been done,” including in Alabama.  Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, 
575 U. S., at 299 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).