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16 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

single out any race, but instead is facially neutral.  Suppose, 
as Justice Scalia once did, that a county has a law limiting 
“voter  registration  [to]  only  three  hours  one  day  a  week.”  
Chisom,  501  U. S.,  at  408  (dissenting  opinion).    And  sup-
pose that policy makes it “more difficult for blacks to regis-
ter than whites”—say, because the jobs African Americans 
disproportionately hold make it harder to take time off in 
that  window.    Ibid.    Those  citizens,  Justice  Scalia  con-
cluded, would then “have less opportunity ‘to participate in 
the political process’ than whites, and §2 would therefore be 
violated.”  Ibid. (emphasis deleted).  In enacting Section 2, 
Congress  documented  many  similar  (if  less  extreme)  fa-
cially  neutral  rules—“registration  requirements,”  “voting 
and  registration  hours,”  voter  “purging”  policies,  and  so 
forth—that  create  disparities  in  voting  opportunities.    S. 
Rep., at 10, n. 22; H. R. Rep. No. 97–227, pp. 11–17 (1981) 
(H. R. Rep.).  Those laws, Congress thought, would violate 
Section 2, though they were not facially discriminatory, be-
cause they gave voters of different races unequal access to 
the political process. 
  Congress  also  made  plain,  in  calling  for  a  totality-of- 
circumstances  inquiry,  that  equal  voting  opportunity  is  a 
function  of  both  law  and  background conditions—in  other 
words, that a voting rule’s validity depends on how the rule 
operates in conjunction with facts on the ground.  “[T]otal-
ity  review,”  this  Court  has  explained,  stems  from  Con-
gress’s recognition of “the demonstrated ingenuity of state 
and local governments in hobbling minority voting power.”  
Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1018 (1994).  Some-
times, of course, state actions overtly target a single race: 
For  example,  Congress  was  acutely  aware,  in  amending 
Section  2,  of  the  elimination  of  polling  places  in  African 
American neighborhoods.  See S. Rep., at 10, 11, and n. 22; 
H. R. Rep., at 17, 35.  But sometimes government officials 
enact facially neutral laws that leverage—and become dis-
criminatory  by  dint  of—pre-existing  social  and  economic