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Page Number: 10.0

4 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

Opinion of the Court 

abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote 
on account of race or color.”  79 Stat. 437. 
  Unlike  other  provisions  of  the  VRA,  §2  attracted  rela-
tively little attention during the congressional debates2 and 
was “little-used” for more than a decade after its passage.3  
But during the same period, this Court considered several 
cases  involving  “vote-dilution”  claims  asserted  under  the 
Equal  Protection  Clause  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  
See  Whitcomb  v.  Chavis,  403  U. S.  124  (1971);  Burns  v. 
Richardson,  384  U. S.  73  (1966);  Fortson  v.  Dorsey,  379 
U. S.  433  (1965).    In  these  and  later  vote-dilution  cases, 
plaintiffs  claimed  that  features  of  legislative  districting 
plans,  including  the  configuration  of  legislative  districts 
and the use of multi-member districts, diluted the ability of 
particular voters to affect the outcome of elections. 
  One Fourteenth Amendment vote-dilution case, White v. 
Regester,  412  U. S.  755  (1973),  came  to  have  outsized  im-
portance in the development of our VRA case law.  In White, 
the  Court  affirmed  a  District  Court’s  judgment  that  two 
multi-member  electoral  districts  were  “being  used  invidi-
ously to cancel out or minimize the voting strength of racial 
groups.”    Id.,  at  765.    The  Court  explained  what  a  vote-
dilution plaintiff must prove, and the words the Court chose 
would  later  assume  great  importance  in  VRA  §2  matters.  
According  to  White,  a  vote-dilution  plaintiff  had  to  show 
that “the political processes leading to nomination and elec-
tion were not equally open to participation by the group in 
question—that its members had less opportunity than did 
other residents in the district to participate in the political 
processes and to elect legislators of their choice.”  Id., at 766 
(emphasis added).  The decision then recited many pieces of 
evidence the District Court had taken into account, and it 
—————— 

2 See Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 60–61 (1980) (plurality opinion) 

(describing §2’s “sparse” legislative history). 

3 Boyd & Markman, The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: 
A Legislative History, 40 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1347, 1352–1353 (1983).