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Page Number: 11.0

4 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

Opinion of the Court 

determine  whether  [racial]  discrimination  existed  . . . : 
Whether  such  discrimination  existed.”    It’s  Results  That 
Count, Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 3, 1982, p. 8–A. 
  But  Mobile  had its  defenders,  too.   In their  view,  aban-
doning the intent test in favor of an effects test would inev-
itably  require  a  focus  on  proportionality—wherever  a  mi-
nority  group  won  fewer  seats  in  the  legislature  than  its 
share of the population, the charge could be made that the 
State law had a discriminatory effect.  That, after all, was 
the type of claim brought in Mobile.  But mandating racial 
proportionality in elections was regarded by many as intol-
erable.  Doing so, wrote Senator Orrin Hatch in the Wash-
ington Star, would be “strongly resented by the American 
public.”  Washington Star, Sept. 30, 1980, p. A–9.  The Wall 
Street  Journal  offered  similar  criticism.    An  effects  test 
would generate “more, not less, racial and ethnic polariza-
tion.”  Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 1982, p. 28. 
  This sharp debate arrived at Congress’s doorstep in 1981.  
The  question  whether to  broaden §2  or keep  it  as  is, said 
Hatch—by then Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee be-
fore which §2 would be debated—“involve[d] one of the most 
substantial  constitutional  issues  ever  to  come  before  this 
body.”  2 Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Consti-
tution  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  the  Judiciary,  97th 
Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 1, p. 1 (1982). 
  Proceedings in Congress mirrored the disagreement that 
had  developed  around  the  country.    In  April  1981,  Con-
gressman Peter W. Rodino, Jr.—longtime chairman of the 
House  Judiciary  Committee—introduced  a  bill  to  amend 
the VRA, proposing that the words “to deny or abridge” in 
§2 be replaced with the phrase “in a manner which results 
in  a  denial  or  abridgement.”    H. R.  3112,  97th  Cong.,  1st 
Sess., 2 (as introduced) (emphasis added).  This was the ef-
fects test that Mobile’s detractors sought. 
  But  those  wary  of  proportionality  were  not  far  behind.  
Senator Hatch argued that the effects test “was intelligible