Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 82.0

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

37 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

enforcement  authority  is  “remedial,  rather  than  substan-
tive,” “[t]here must be a congruence and proportionality be-
tween  the  injury  to  be  prevented  or  remedied  and  the 
means adopted to that end.”19  Id., at 520.  Congress’ chosen 
means, moreover, must “ ‘consist with the letter and spirit 
of  the  constitution.’ ”    Shelby  County  v.  Holder,  570  U. S. 
529, 555 (2013) (quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 
316, 421 (1819)); accord, Miller, 515 U. S., at 927. 
  Here,  as with everything  else  in  our  vote-dilution  juris-
prudence, the task of sound analysis is encumbered by the 
lack of clear principles defining §2 liability in districting.  It 
is awkward to examine the “congruence” and “proportional-
ity” of a statutory rule whose very meaning exists in a per-
petual state of uncertainty.  The majority makes clear, how-
ever,  that the primary factual  predicate  of  a  vote-dilution 
claim  is  “bloc  voting  along  racial  lines”  that  results  in 
majority-preferred candidates defeating minority-preferred 
ones.    Ante,  at  17;  accord,  Gingles,  478  U. S.,  at  48  (“The 
theoretical basis for [vote-dilution claims] is that where mi-
nority and majority voters consistently prefer different can-
didates, the majority, by virtue of its numerical superiority, 
will regularly defeat the choices of minority voters”).  And, 
as I have shown, the remedial logic with which the District 
Court’s construction of §2 addresses that “wrong” rests on a 
proportional-control benchmark limited only by feasibility.  
Thus,  the  relevant  statutory  rule  may  be  approximately 
stated as follows: If voting is racially polarized in a jurisdic-
tion, and if there exists any more or less reasonably config-
ured districting plan that would enable the minority group 
to constitute a majority in a number of districts roughly pro-
portional to its share of the population, then the jurisdiction 

—————— 

19 While  our  congruence-and-proportionality  cases  have  focused  pri-
marily on the Fourteenth Amendment, they make clear that the same 
principles govern “Congress’ parallel power to enforce the provisions of 
the Fifteenth Amendment.”  City of Boerne, 521 U. S., at 518.