Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 75

30 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

E 
  The  majority  opinion does  not  acknowledge  the District 
Court’s  express  proportionality-based  reasoning.    That 
omission  is  of  a  piece  with  its  earlier  noted  failures  to 
acknowledge the well-known indeterminacy of the Gingles 
framework, that black Alabamians are about two-sevenths 
of  the  State’s  population,  and  that  the  plaintiffs  here  are 
thus seeking statewide proportionality.  Through this pat-
tern of omissions, the majority obscures the burning ques-
tion in these cases.  The District Court’s vote-dilution find-
ing can be justified only by a racially loaded benchmark—
specifically, a benchmark of proportional control based on 
race.  Is that the benchmark the statute demands?  The ma-
jority fails to confront this question head on, and it studi-
ously avoids mentioning anything that would require it to 
do so. 
  The same nonresponsiveness infects the majority’s anal-
ysis, which is largely devoted to rebutting an argument no-
body  makes.    Contrary  to  the  majority’s  telling,  Alabama 
does not equate the “race-neutral benchmark” with “the me-
dian or average number of majority-minority districts” in a 
large  computer-generated  set  of  race-blind  districting 
plans.  Ante, at 15.  The State’s argument for a race-neutral 
benchmark  is  rooted  in  the  text  of  §2,  the  logic  of  vote- 
dilution  claims,  and  the  constitutional  problems  with  any 
nonneutral benchmark.  See Brief for Appellants 32–46.  It 
then relies on the computer evidence in these cases, among 
other facts, to argue that the plaintiffs have not shown di-
lution relative to any race-neutral benchmark.  See id., at 
54–56.  But the idea that “race-neutral benchmark” means 
the  composite  average of  many  computer-generated plans 
is the majority’s alone. 
  After  thus  straw-manning  Alabama’s  arguments  at  the 
outset,  the  majority  muddles  its  own  response.    In  a  per-
functory footnote, it disclaims any holding that “algorithmic 
map  making”  evidence  “is  categorically  irrelevant”  in  §2