Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 65

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

21 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

deny,  minority  citizens’  voting  rights.    It  declines  to  con-
sider Congress’s use of an effects test, rather than a purpose 
test,  to  assess  the  rules’  legality.    Nor  does  the  majority 
acknowledge  the  force  of  Section  2’s  implementing  provi-
sion.  The majority says as little as possible about what it 
means for voting to be “equally open,” or for voters to have 
an equal “opportunity” to cast a ballot.  See ante, at 14–15.  
It only grudgingly accepts—and then apparently forgets—
that the provision applies to facially neutral laws with dis-
criminatory consequences.  Compare ante, at 22, with ante, 
at 25.  And it hints that as long as a voting system is suffi-
ciently “open,” it need not be equally so.  See ante, at 16, 18.  
In sum, the majority skates over the strong words Congress 
drafted to accomplish its equally strong purpose: ensuring 
that  minority  citizens  can  access  the  electoral  system  as 
easily as whites.7 
  The  majority  instead  founds  its  decision  on  a  list  of 
mostly  made-up  factors,  at  odds  with  Section  2  itself.    To 
excuse this unusual free-form exercise, the majority notes 

—————— 

7 In a single sentence, the majority huffs that “nobody disputes” vari-
ous of these “points of law.”  Ante, at 21.  Excellent!  I only wish the ma-
jority would take them to heart, both individually and in combination.  
For example, the majority says it agrees that Section 2 reaches beyond 
denials of voting to any “abridgement.”  But then, as I’ll later discuss, it 
insists that Section 2 has an interest only in rules that “block or seriously 
hinder  voting”—which  appears  to  create  a  “denial  or  serious  abridge-
ment” standard.  Ante, at 16; see infra, at 22–23.  Or, for example, the 
majority says it accepts that Section 2 may prohibit facially neutral elec-
tion rules.  But the majority takes every opportunity of casting doubt on 
those applications.  Each facially neutral rule it mentions is one that it 
“doubt[s]”  Congress  could  have  “intended  to  uproot.”    Ante,  at  18;  see 
ante, at 6, 18, 21, 25.  And it criticizes this dissent for understanding the 
statute (but how could anyone understand it differently?) as focusing on 
the  racially  “disparate  impact”  of  neutral  election  rules  on  the  oppor-
tunity to vote.  Ante, at 21.  Most fundamentally, the majority refuses to 
acknowledge how all the “points of law” it professes to agree with work 
in tandem to signal a statute of significant power and scope.