Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 74.0

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

29 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

plan could better approximate proportional control?  In this 
approach,  proportionality  is  the  ultimate  benchmark,  and 
the first Gingles precondition becomes a proxy for whether 
that benchmark is reasonably attainable in practice. 
  Beneath all the trappings of the Gingles framework, that 
two-part  test  describes  how  the  District  Court  applied  §2 
here.  The gravitational force of proportionality is obvious 
throughout its opinion.  At the front end, the District Court 
even built proportionality into its understanding of Gingles’ 
first  precondition,  finding  the  plaintiffs’  illustrative  maps 
to be reasonably configured in part because they “provide[d] 
a  number  of  majority-Black  districts  . . .  roughly  propor-
tional  to  the  Black  percentage  of  the  population.”    582 
F. Supp. 3d, at 1016.  At the back end, the District Court 
concluded its “totality” analysis by revisiting proportional-
ity and finding that it “weigh[ed] decidedly in favor of the 
plaintiffs.”    Id.,  at  1025.    While  the  District  Court  dis-
claimed  giving  overriding  significance  to  proportionality, 
the fact remains that nothing else in its reasoning provides 
a  logical  nexus  to  its  finding  of  a  districting  wrong  and  a 
need  for  a  districting  remedy.    Finally,  as  if  to  leave  no 
doubt about its implicit benchmark, the court admonished 
the State that “any remedial plan will need to include two 
districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age 
majority or something quite close.”  Id., at 1033.  In sum, 
the  District  Court’s  thinly  disguised  benchmark  was  pro-
portionality:  Black  Alabamians  are  about  two-sevenths  of 
the  State’s  population,  so  they  should  control  two  of  the 
State’s seven congressional seats. 
  That was error—perhaps an understandable error given 
the  limitations  of  the  Gingles  framework,  but  error  none-
theless.  As explained earlier, any principled application of 
§2  to  cases  such  as  these  requires  a  meaningfully  race-
neutral benchmark.  The benchmark cannot be an a priori 
thumb on the scale for racially proportional control.