Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 84

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

39 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

are  not  merely  foreign  to  the  Amendments.    Rather,  they 
are radically inconsistent with the Amendments’ command 
that  government  treat  citizens  as  individuals  and  their 
“goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.”  
Ibid. 
  Those notions are, however, the values at the heart of §2 
as construed by the District Court and the majority.  As ap-
plied here, the statute effectively considers it a legal wrong 
by the State if white Alabamians vote for candidates from 
one political party at high enough rates, provided that black 
Alabamians  vote  for  candidates from the  other  party  at  a 
still higher rate.  And the statute remedies that wrong by 
requiring the State to engage in race-based redistricting in 
the direction of proportional control. 
  I am not certain that Congress’ enforcement power could 
ever justify a statute so at odds “ ‘with the letter and spirit 
of the constitution.’ ”  Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 555.  If it 
could, it must be because Congress “identified a history and 
pattern”  of  actual  constitutional  violations  that,  for  some 
reason,  required  extraordinary  prophylactic  remedies.  
Garrett, 531 U. S., at 368.  But the legislative record of the 
1982 amendments is devoid of any showing that might jus-
tify  §2’s  blunt  approximation  of  a  “racial  register  for  allo-
cating  representation  on  the  basis  of  race.”    Holder,  512 
U. S., at 908 (opinion of THOMAS, J.).  To be sure, the Senate 
Judiciary  Committee  Report  that  accompanied  the  1982 
amendment to the Voting Rights Act “listed many examples 
of what the Committee took to be unconstitutional vote di-
lution.”  Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (emphasis 
added).  But the Report also showed the Committee’s fun-
damental lack of “concern with whether” those examples re-
flected the “intentional” discrimination required “to raise a 
constitutional  issue.”    Allen,  589  U. S.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at 
15).   The  Committee’s  “principal  reason” for rejecting  dis-
criminatory purpose was simply that it preferred an alter-
native  legal  standard;  it  thought  Mobile’s  intent  test  was