Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 63.0

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

19 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

election rule, operating against the backdrop of historical, 
social, and economic conditions, makes it harder for minor-
ity citizens than for others to cast ballots.  And strong state 
interests  may  save  an  otherwise  discriminatory  rule,  but 
only if that rule is needed to achieve them—that is, only if 
a less discriminatory rule will not attain the State’s goal. 
  That  is  a  lot  of  law  to  apply  in  a  Section  2  case.    Real 
law—the  kind  created  by  Congress.    (A  strange  thing,  to 
hear about it all only in a dissent.)6  None of this law threat-
ens  to  “take  down,”  as  the  majority  charges,  the  mass  of 
state and local election rules.  Ante, at 25.  Here is the flip-
side of what I have said above, now from the plaintiff ’s per-
spective: Section 2 demands proof of a statistically signifi-
in  electoral  opportunities  (not 
cant  racial  disparity 

—————— 

6 Contra the majority, see ante, at 5–6, 22, and n. 14, the House-Senate 
compromise reached in amending Section 2 has nothing to do with the 
law relevant here.  The majority is hazy about the content of this com-
promise for a reason: It was about proportional representation.  As then-
Justice Rehnquist explained, members of the Senate expressed concern 
that the “results in” language of the House-passed bill would provide not 
“merely  for  equal  ‘access’  to the  political  process”  but  also  “for  propor-
tional representation” of minority voters.  Mississippi Republican Exec-
utive Committee v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002, 1010 (1984) (dissenting opin-
ion).  Senator Dole’s solution was to add text making clear that minority 
voters had a right to equal voting opportunities, but no right to elect mi-
nority candidates “in numbers equal to their proportion in the popula-
tion.”  52 U. S. C. §10301(b).  The Dole Amendment, as Justice Rehnquist 
noted, ensured that under the “results in” language equal “ ‘access’ only 
was required.”  469 U. S., at 1010–1011; see 128 Cong. Rec. 14132 (1982) 
(Sen. Dole explaining that as amended “the focus of the standard is on 
whether  there  is  equal  access  to  the  political  process,  not  on  whether 
members of a particular minority group have achieved proportional elec-
tion  results”).    Nothing—literally  nothing—suggests  that  the  Senate 
wanted to water down the equal-access right that everyone agreed the 
House’s language covered.  So the majority is dead wrong to say that I 
want to “undo” the House-Senate compromise.  Ante, at 22.  It is the ma-
jority that wants to transform that compromise to support a view of Sec-
tion 2 held in neither the House nor the Senate.