Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 67.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

23 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1018; see supra, at 17.  The section 
applies  to  any  discriminatory  “voting  qualification,”  “pre-
requisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or procedure”—
even the kind creating only (what the majority thinks of as) 
an ordinary burden.  And the section cares about any race-
based “abridgments” of voting, not just measures that come 
near to preventing that activity.  Congress, recall, was in-
tent  on  eradicating  the  “subtle,  as  well  as  the  obvious,” 
ways  of  suppressing  minority  voting.    Allen,  393  U. S.,  at 
565; see supra, at 14.  One of those more subtle ways is to 
impose “inconveniences,” especially a collection of them, dif-
ferentially affecting members of one race.  The certain re-
sult—because  every  inconvenience  makes  voting  both 
somewhat more difficult and somewhat less likely—will be 
to deter minority votes.  In countenancing such an election 
system,  the  majority  departs  from  Congress’s  vision,  set 
down  in  text,  of  ensuring  equal  voting  opportunity.    It 
chooses equality-lite. 
  And what is a “mere inconvenience” or “usual burden” an-
yway?    The  drafters  of  the  Voting  Rights  Act  understood 
that “social and historical conditions,” including disparities 
in education, wealth, and employment, often affect oppor-
tunities to vote.  Gingles, 478 U. S., at 47; see supra, at 16–
17.  What does not prevent one citizen from casting a vote 
might prevent another.  How is a judge supposed to draw 
an  “inconvenience”  line  in  some  reasonable  place,  taking 
those differences into account?  Consider a law banning the 
handing  out  of  water  to  voters.    No  more  than—or  not 
even—an inconvenience when lines are short; but what of 
when they are, as in some neighborhoods, hours-long?  The 
point  here  is  that  judges  lack  an  objective  way  to  decide 
which voting obstacles are “mere” and which are not, for all 
voters at all times.  And so Section 2 does not ask the ques-
tion. 
  The majority’s “multiple ways to vote” factor is similarly 
flawed.  Ante, at 18.  True enough, a State with three ways