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Page Number: 70

26 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

  That leaves only the majority’s discussion of state inter-
ests, which is again skewed so as to limit Section 2 liability.  
No doubt that under our precedent, a state interest in an 
election rule “is a legitimate factor to be considered.”  Hou-
ston  Lawyers’  Assn.,  501  U. S.,  at  426.    But  the  majority 
wrongly  dismisses  the need  for  the  closest possible fit  be-
tween  means  and  end—that  is,  between  the  terms  of  the 
rule and the State’s asserted interest.  Ante, at 21.  In the 
past,  this  Court  has  stated  that  a  discriminatory  election 
rule must fall, no matter how weighty the interest claimed, 
if  a  less  biased  law  would  not  “significantly  impair[  that] 
interest.”    Houston  Lawyers’  Assn.,  501  U. S.,  at  428;  see 
supra, at 17–18, and n. 5.  And as the majority concedes, we 
apply that kind of means-end standard in every other con-
text—employment,  housing,  banking—where  the  law  ad-
dresses racially discriminatory effects: There, the rule must 
be “strict[ly] necess[ary]” to the interest.  Ante, at 21; see, 
e.g.,  Albemarle  Paper  Co.  v.  Moody,  422  U. S.  405,  425 
(1975) (holding that an employment policy cannot stand if 
another  policy,  “without  a  similarly  undesirable  racial  ef-
fect, would also serve the employer’s legitimate interest”).  
The  majority  argues  that  “[t]he  text  of  [those]  provisions” 
differs from Section 2’s.  Ante, at 20.  But if anything, Sec-
tion  2  gives  less  weight  to  competing  interests:  Unlike  in 
most  discrimination  laws,  they  enter  the  inquiry  only 
through the provision’s reference to the “totality of circum-
stances”—through, then, a statutory backdoor.  So the ma-
jority falls back on the idea that “[d]emanding such a tight 
fit would have the effect of invalidating a great many neu-
tral voting regulations.”  Ante, at 21; see ante, at 25.  But a 
state  interest  becomes  relevant  only  when  a  voting  rule, 
even  if  neutral  on  its  face,  is  found  not  neutral  in  opera-
tion—only, that is, when the rule provides unequal access 
to the political process.  Apparently, the majority does not 
want to “invalidate [too] many” of those actually discrimi-
natory rules.  But Congress had a different goal in enacting