Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 26

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

19 

Opinion of the Court 

portionality,  as  our  decisions  have  frequently  demon-
strated. 
  In Shaw v. Reno, for example, we considered the permis-
sibility of a second majority-minority district in North Car-
olina, which at the time had 12 seats in the U. S. House of 
Representatives  and  a  20%  black  voting  age  population.  
509 U. S. 630, 633–634 (1993).  The second majority-minor-
ity district North Carolina drew was “160 miles long and, 
for much of its length, no wider than the [interstate] corri-
dor.”  Id., at 635.  The district wound “in snakelike fashion 
through  tobacco  country,  financial  centers,  and  manufac-
turing areas until it gobble[d] in enough enclaves of black 
neighborhoods.”  Id., at 635–636.  Indeed, the district was 
drawn so imaginatively that one state legislator remarked: 
“[I]f you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, 
you’d kill most of the people in the district.”  Id., at 636. 
  Though  North  Carolina  believed  the  additional  district 
was required by §2, we rejected that conclusion, finding in-
stead that those challenging the map stated a claim of im-
permissible racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protec-
tion Clause.  Id., at 655, 658.  In so holding, we relied on the 
fact that the proposed district was not reasonably compact.  
Id., at 647.  North Carolina had “concentrated a dispersed 
minority population in a single district by disregarding tra-
ditional districting principles such as compactness, contigu-
ity, and respect for political subdivisions.”  Ibid. (emphasis 
added).  And “[a] reapportionment plan that includes in one 
district  individuals who  belong  to  the  same  race,  but  who 
are  otherwise  separated  by  geographical  and  political 
boundaries,”  we  said,  raised  serious  constitutional  con-
cerns.  Ibid. (emphasis added). 
  The same theme emerged in our 1995 decision Miller v. 
Johnson, where we upheld a district court’s finding that one 
of Georgia’s ten congressional districts was the product of 
an impermissible racial gerrymander.  515 U. S. 900, 906, 
910–911.  At the time, Georgia’s black voting age population