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Page Number: 85.0

40 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

“the  wrong  question,”  and  that  courts  should  instead  ask 
whether a State’s election laws offered minorities “a fair op-
portunity  to  participate”  in  the  political  process.    S. Rep. 
No. 97–417, p. 36. 
  As applied here, the amended §2 thus falls on the wrong 
side of “the line between measures that remedy or prevent 
unconstitutional  actions  and  measures  that  make  a  sub-
stantive change in the governing law.”  City of Boerne, 521 
U. S.,  at  519.    It  replaces  the  constitutional  right  against 
intentionally discriminatory districting with an amorphous 
race-based right to a “fair” distribution of political power, a 
“right” that cannot be implemented without requiring the 
very evils the Constitution forbids. 
  If that alone were not fatal, §2’s “reach and scope” fur-
ther belie any congruence and proportionality between its 
districting-related commands, on the one hand, and action-
able  constitutional  wrongs,  on  the  other.    Id.,  at  532.    Its 
“[s]weeping coverage ensures its intrusion at every level of 
government” and in every electoral system.  Ibid.  It “has 
no  termination  date  or  termination  mechanism.”    Ibid.  
Thus, the amended §2 is not spatially or temporally “limited 
to those cases in which constitutional violations [are] most 
likely.”  Id., at 533.  Nor does the statute limit its reach to 
“attac[k] a particular type” of electoral mechanism “with a 
long history as a ‘notorious means to deny and abridge vot-
ing rights on racial grounds.’ ”  Ibid. (quoting South Caro-
lina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 355 (1966) (Black, J., con-
curring  and  dissenting)).    In  view  of  this  “indiscriminate 
scope,” “it simply cannot be said that ‘many of [the district-
ing plans] affected by the congressional enactment have a 
significant  likelihood  of  being  unconstitutional.’ ”    Florida 
Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings 
Bank, 527 U. S. 627, 647 (1999) (quoting City of Boerne, 521 
U. S., at 532). 
  Of  course,  under  the  logically  unbounded  totality-of-