Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 51.0

6 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

II 
  Even  if  §2  applies  here,  however,  Alabama  should  pre-
vail.    The  District  Court  found  that  Alabama’s  congres-
sional  districting  map  “dilutes”  black  residents’  votes  be-
cause,  while  it  is  possible  to  draw  two  majority-black 
districts,  Alabama’s  map  only  has  one.5    But  the  critical 
question  in  all  vote-dilution  cases  is:  “Diluted  relative  to 
what benchmark?”  Gonzalez v. Aurora, 535 F. 3d 594, 598 
(CA7 2008) (Easterbrook, C. J.).  Neither the District Court 
nor the majority has any defensible answer.  The text of §2 
and the logic of vote-dilution claims require a meaningfully 
race-neutral  benchmark,  and  no  race-neutral  benchmark 
can  justify  the  District  Court’s  finding  of  vote  dilution  in 
these cases.  The only benchmark that can justify it—and 
the  one  that  the  District  Court  demonstrably  applied—is 

—————— 
the founding or for more than a century thereafter.  See T. Lee, Stare 
Decisis  in  Historical  Perspective:  From  the  Founding  Era  to  the 
Rehnquist Court, 52 Vand. L. Rev. 647, 708–732 (1999).  But, even put-
ting those problems aside, any appeal to heightened statutory stare de-
cisis is particularly misplaced in this context.  As the remainder of this 
dissent explains in depth, the Court’s §2 precedents differ from “ordinary 
statutory  precedents”  in  two  vital  ways.    Ante,  at  2,  n. 1  (opinion  of 
KAVANAUGH, J.).  The first is their profound tension with the Constitu-
tion’s  hostility  to  racial  classifications,  a  tension  that  JUSTICE 
KAVANAUGH acknowledges and that makes every §2 question the reverse 
side of a corresponding constitutional question.  See ante, at 4.  The sec-
ond is that, to whatever extent §2 applies to districting, it can only “be 
understood as a delegation of authority to the courts to develop a common 
law of racially fair elections.”  C. Elmendorf, Making Sense of Section 2: 
Of Biased Votes, Unconstitutional Elections, and Common Law Statutes, 
160 U. Pa. L. Rev. 377, 383 (2012).  It would be absurd to maintain that 
this Court’s “notoriously unclear and confusing” §2 case law follows, in 
any straightforward way, from the statutory text’s high-flown language 
about the equal openness of political processes.  Merrill v. Milligan, 595 
U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in grant of applications 
for stays) (slip op., at 6). 

5 Like the majority, I refer to both courts below as “the District Court” 

without distinction.