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Page Number: 63

18 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Black Belt.  The plaintiffs’ maps, therefore, cannot and do 
not  achieve  their  goal  of  two  majority-black  districts  by 
“join[ing]  together”  the  Black  Belt,  as  the  majority  seems 
wrongly  to  believe.    Ante,  at  13.    Rather,  their  majority-
black districts are anchored by three separate high-density 
clusters  of  black  residents  in  three  separate  metropolitan 
areas, two of them outside the Black Belt.  The Black Belt’s 
largely  rural  remainder  is  then  divided  between  the  two 
districts  to  the  extent  needed  to  fill  out  their  population 
numbers  with  black  majorities  in  both.    Respect  for  the 
Black Belt as a community of interest cannot explain this 
approach.    The  only  explanation  is  the  plaintiffs’  express 
racial  target:  two  majority-black  districts  and  statewide 
proportionality. 
  The  District  Court  nonetheless  found  that  race  did  not 
predominate in the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps because Dr. 
Duchin and Mr. Cooper “prioritized race only as necessary 
. . .  to  draw  two  reasonably  compact  majority-Black  con-
gressional districts,” as opposed to “maximiz[ing] the num-
ber of majority-Black districts, or the BVAP [black voting-
age population] in any particular majority-Black district.”  
Singleton v. Merrill, 582 F. Supp. 3d 924, 1029–1030 (ND 
Ala. 2022) (per curiam).  This reasoning shows a profound 
misunderstanding  of  our  racial-gerrymandering  prece-
dents.  As explained above, what triggers strict scrutiny is 
the  intentional  use  of  a  racial  classification  in  placing  “a 
significant number of voters within or without a particular 
district.”  Miller, 515 U. S., at 916.  Thus, any plan whose 
predominant purpose is to achieve a nonnegotiable, prede-
termined  racial  target  in  a  nonnegotiable,  predetermined 
number of districts is a racial gerrymander subject to strict 
scrutiny.  The precise fraction used as the racial target, and 
the number of districts it is applied to, are irrelevant.