Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 70

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

25 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

settled,  determinate  legal  principles.    But  it  is  widely 
acknowledged  that  “Gingles  and  its  progeny  have  engen-
dered  considerable  disagreement  and  uncertainty  regard-
ing the nature and contours of a vote dilution claim,” with 
commentators “noting the lack of any ‘authoritative resolu-
tion  of  the  basic  questions  one  would  need  to  answer  to 
make sense of [§2’s] results test.’ ”  Merrill v. Milligan, 595 
U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting from 
grant of applications for stays) (slip op., at 1–2) (quoting C. 
Elmendorf, Making Sense of Section 2: Of Biased Votes, Un-
constitutional Elections, and Common Law Statutes, 160 U. 
Pa.  L. Rev.  377,  389  (2012)).    If  there  is  any  “area  of  law 
notorious for its many unsolved puzzles,” this is it.  J. Chen 
&  N.  Stephanopoulos,  The  Race-Blind  Future  of  Voting 
Rights,  130 Yale  L.  J. 862,  871  (2021); see  also  Duchin  & 
Spencer 758 (“Vote dilution on the basis of group member-
ship is a crucial instance of the lack of a prescribed ideal”). 
  The  source  of  this  confusion  is  fundamental:  Quite 
simply, we have never succeeded in translating the Gingles 
framework into an objective and workable method of iden-
tifying the undiluted benchmark.  The second and third pre-
conditions  are  all  but  irrelevant to  the  task.   They  essen-
tially collapse into one question: Is voting racially polarized 
such that minority-preferred candidates consistently lose to 
majority-preferred  ones?    See  Gingles,  478  U. S.,  at  51.  
Even if the answer is yes, that tells a court nothing about 
“how  hard  it  ‘should’  be  for  minority  voters  to  elect  their 
preferred candidates under an acceptable system.”  Id., at 
88 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment).  Perhaps an ac-
ceptable system is one in which the minority simply cannot 
elect its preferred candidates; it is, after all, a minority.  Re-
jecting that outcome as “dilutive” requires a value judgment 
relative to a benchmark that polarization alone cannot pro-
vide. 
  The  first  Gingles  precondition  is  only  marginally  more 
useful.    True,  the  benchmark  in  a  redistricting  challenge