Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 40.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

33 

Opinion of the Court 

the  1980  decision  City  of  Mobile,  a  case  about  districting.  
And—as  the  dissent itself  acknowledges—“Congress  drew 
§2(b)’s current operative language” from the 1973 decision 
White v. Regester, post, at 4, n. 3 (opinion of THOMAS, J.), a 
case that was also about districting (in fact, a case that in-
validated two multimember districts in Texas and ordered 
them  redrawn  into  single-member  districts,  412  U. S.,  at 
765).  This was not lost on anyone when §2 was amended.  
Indeed, it was the precise reason that the contentious de-
bates over proportionality raged—debates that would have 
made little sense if §2 covered only poll taxes and the like, 
as the dissent contends. 
  We also reject Alabama’s argument that §2 as applied to 
redistricting 
is  unconstitutional  under  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment.  According to Alabama, that Amendment per-
mits Congress to legislate against only purposeful discrim-
ination by States.  See Brief for Alabama 73.  But we held 
over 40 years ago “that, even if §1 of the [Fifteenth] Amend-
ment prohibits only purposeful discrimination, the prior de-
cisions of this Court foreclose any argument that Congress 
may not, pursuant to §2 [of the Fifteenth Amendment] out-
law voting practices that are discriminatory in effect.”  City 
of  Rome  v.  United  States,  446  U. S.  156,  173  (1980).    The 
VRA’s “ban on electoral changes that are discriminatory in 
effect,”  we  emphasized,  “is  an  appropriate  method  of  pro-
moting the purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment.”  Id., at 
177.  As City of Rome recognized, we had reached the very 
same  conclusion  in  South  Carolina  v.  Katzenbach,  a  deci-
sion issued right after the VRA was first enacted.  383 U. S., 
at  308–309,  329–337;  see  also  Brnovich,  594  U. S.,  at  ___ 
(slip op., at 3). 
  Alabama  further  argues  that,  even  if  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment authorizes the effects test of §2, that Amend-
ment does not authorize race-based redistricting as a rem-
edy  for  §2  violations.    But  for  the  last  four  decades,  this 
Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly applied