Court Opinion

ID: 9746899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:43:24.594834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:18.031817
License: Public Domain

RICHARD L. VOORHEES, Chief Judge,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part:
I concur in the majority’s findings here that the Plaintiffs have sufficient standing to bring suit under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and further that Plaintiffs have successfully carried their burden of showing a racial gerrymander, for which the State of North Carolina must now offer compelling justification. I also concur in the majority’s finding that Plaintiffs retain the ultimate burden of persuasion throughout these proceedings. However, I register my dissent as to the balance of the majority’s opinion.
I.

Nature of the Constitutional Wrong

I agree that the evidence presented at trial wholly supports the finding here of a racial gerrymander, and that as such North Carolina’s redistricting plan must survive strict scrutiny before it can be said to pass constitutional muster. Indeed, one glance at the map suffices to demonstrate to even the most casual observer the existence of at the very least a suspect intent on the part of the North Carolina General Assembly, a suspect intent that in itself demands explanation and justification.1 But I would go one step further than the majority in assessing the significance of the shapes of the districts currently before us, consistent with my reading of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Shaw v. Reno.
The majority’s opinion explicitly limits the relevance of the districts’ odd shapes to circumstantial evidence of the State’s alleged discriminatory intent. See ante at 430-431, 449. Where the legislature has conceded such an unlawful intent, as its witnesses have explicitly done here, the majority would dismiss any evidence of district shape as essentially duplicative.2 This approach, however, ignores the special breed of harms recently recognized by the Supreme Court in Shaw, a breed of harms “analytically distinct” from any associated with the mere intent to discriminate. Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. *477at 2830 (“Nothing in [United, Jewish Organizations v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144, 97 S.Ct. 996, 51 L.Ed.2d 229 (1977) ] precludes white voters (or voters of any other race) from bringing the analytically distinct claim that a reapportionment plan rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to segregate citizens into separate voting districts on the basis of race without sufficient justification”). The Court in Shaw characterized those harms explicitly as follows:
Put differently, we believe that reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter. A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid. It reinforces the perception that members of the same racial group — regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live — think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotypes. By perpetuating such notions, a racial gerrymander may exacerbate the very patterns of racial bloc voting that majority-minority districting is sometimes said to counteract.
The message that such districting sends to elected representatives is equally pernicious. When a district obviously is created solely to effectuate the perceived common interests of one racial group, elected officials are more likely to believe that their primary obligation is to represent only the members of that group, rather than their constituency as a whole. This is altogether antithetical to our system of representative democracy.
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Justice Souter apparently believes that racial gerrymandering is harmless unless it dilutes a racial group’s voting strength. As we have explained, however, reapportionment legislation that cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to classify and separate voters by race injures voters in other ways. It reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole. Justice Souter does not adequately explain why these harms are not cognizable under the Fourteenth Amendment.
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Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters — a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to aspire.
Id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827-32 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). In short, race-based districting creates racially conscious districts and foments racial polarization within them.
As observed by Justice White in his dissent in Shaw, “[t]he logic of [the majority’s] theory appears to be that race-conscious redistricting that ‘segregates’ by drawing odd-shaped lines is qualitatively different from race-conscious redistricting that affects groups in some other way.” Id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2838 (White, J., dissenting). Indeed, Justice White’s observation is consistent with my reading of Shaw v. Reno as well. The majority here, however, fails even to acknowledge this significant distinction, instead implicitly subscribing to Justice White’s argument that “[t]he consideration of race in ‘segregation’ cases is no different than in other race-conscious districting____ A plan that ‘segregates’ being functionally indistinguishable from any of the other varieties of gerrymandering, we should be consistent in what we require from a claimant: Proof of discriminatory purpose and effect.” Id. at *478-, 113 S.Ct. at 2840-41.3 Of course, this assumes first that a plan that “segregates” is, a priori, functionally indistinguishable from a more compact redistrieting plan, an assumption that ignores the special breed of harms recognized by the Supreme Court, and second that the only cognizable “effects” under the Equal Protection Clause therefore are vote dilution and obstruction of voter access. See id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2836 (White, J., dissenting) (equal protection violation “only where the electoral system substantially disadvantages certain voters in their opportunity to influence the political process effectively”). That Shaw requires the State to justify not only its coneededly discriminatory intent but also its scheme of implementation as a matter of constitutional relevance should not be sin-prising but expected in light of the divisive role that race has played in American society to date.4
Not long ago, in Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109, 106 S.Ct. 2797, 92 L.Ed.2d 85 (1986), a plurality of the Supreme Court observed that “the valid or invalid configuration of the [politically gerrymandered] districts was an issue we did not need to consider,” id. at 142, 106 S.Ct. at 2815, since the Court expressly determined that “aside from election results, none of the facts found by the district court were relevant to the question of discriminatory effects.” Id. at 142 n. 20, 106 S.Ct. at 2815 n. 20 (opinion by White, J.). Significantly, the Court in Shaw found that at least in the context of racial gerrymanders the configuration of districts is indeed relevant to the question of “discriminatory effects.” In that regard, it seems clear from the cited language in Shaw, and from notions of logic and common sense, that a racially gerrymandered district of the tortuous nature presented here inflicts a harm qualitatively distinct from that imposed by an intentionally created majority-minority district whose contours are geographically compact and contiguous, a harm that the Supreme Court has found to be cognizable under the Fourteenth Amendment. The constitutional injury here, then, derives not only from the nature of the State’s ultimate objective— namely, to classify citizens on the basis of their race — but also from the means employed to achieve that objective — namely, voting districts so grossly misshapen as necessarily to divide and stigmatize their citizenry along racial lines. As the legislature must go to greater and greater lengths of disfigurement to achieve a racially preconceived result because of the dispersion of minority voters among the population, the districts at last become so bizarre in shape that they can only be perceived as racially designated districts.5 At this point, the harm has achieved a constitutional dimension and the shapes of the districts an unconstitutional one.6
*479In order to prevail the State should therefore be required to offer a compelling justification for the means employed as well as the ends served. The evidence adduced simply does not support a finding of such justification. Put another way, I would find the districts created here to be inherently defective, by characterization not sufficiently “narrowly tailored” to survive strict scrutiny. To dismiss the relevance of district shape from our inquiry otherwise is to ignore the Supreme Court’s mandate in this particular case.7
II.

Lack of Justification

The primary justification proffered by the State for its redistricting plan, on which the majority here entirely relies, is its statutory duty to comply with the Voting Rights Act.8 The State argues that it had a duty to comply both with § 2 and with § 5 of the Act, thereby necessitating at least two majority-minority districts, if not these two majority-minority districts in particular. Keeping in mind the crucial distinction between compact and non-compact majority-minority districts and the implications thereof as recognized in Shaw, I will address each of the State’s arguments, and the majority’s disposition thereof, in turn.
A. Compliance With Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
The State first asserts that it had a compelling interest in complying with § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and that failure to create the districts at issue might very well have resulted in liability thereunder. Essentially the State argues that it had a duty to anticipate a potential violation of the Voting Rights Act and to remedy such a violation in a timely fashion. As the Supreme Court has recognized, “[t]he States certainly have a very strong interest in complying with federal antidiscrimination laws that are constitutionally valid as interpreted and as applied.” Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2830. In order to rely on such an interest, however, the State must at the very least demonstrate that “it has convincing evidence that remedial action is warranted. That is, it must have sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that there has been [some violation of the Voting Rights Act].” Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 277, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 1848-49, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986) (plurality opinion) (regarding remedial action for *480prior discrimination). In other words, the trial court must make a factual determination that the State “had a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary.” Id.
The Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 106 S.Ct. 2752, 92 L.Ed.2d 25 (1986), set out the threshold requirements for a vote dilution claim under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. First, a minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” Id. at 50, 106 S.Ct. at 2766 (footnote omitted). Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is “politically cohesive.” Id. at 51, 106 S.Ct. at 2767. Third, the minority must be able to demonstrate that “the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Id. (citation omitted). These being the threshold requirements for liability under § 2 for vote dilution, it follows that North Carolina must have had a “strong basis” in evidence for concluding that these three requirements had been met and that remedial action was therefore necessary.
It is significant to note as a preliminary matter that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever in the legislative history of Chapter 7 regarding violations of the Voting Rights Act, or the necessity for any remedial action, other than as a response to the Attorney General’s objections lodged against the State’s initial redistricting proposal. Certainly no legislative findings were ever made during the redistricting process concerning the relevance of the factors set out in Gingles; on the contrary, in its submission to the Department of Justice in support of Chapter 601, its original redistricting plan, the State expressly disavowed the importance thereof altogether.9 The majority here makes only *481conelusory observations about the General Assembly’s “powerful, recent institutional and individual memories,” see ante at 463, its “general perception” concerning potential liability under the Voting Rights Act, ante at 464, and the fact that it was “without doubt aware” or “necessarily aware” of the requisite circumstances thereunder. See ante at 463, 464. But the majority’s opinion fails to cite where in the legislative record the General Assembly specifically considered its duties under the Voting Rights Act and the implications thereof for a proposed redistricting plan.10 The State’s contention that it was actually motivated by such concerns in light of the substantial evidence to the contrary has no support in the record whatsoever. Reversing its earlier contemporaneous position, the State now advances this argument as a matter of convenience to justify its unconstitutional behavior in enacting Chapter 7.
The majority holds that contemporaneous findings need not be made by a legislature prior to taking remedial action, see ante at 437-439, 474-475, a proposition with which I generally agree. But in holding contemporaneous legislative findings of past discrimination unnecessary, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court contemplated rendering them irrelevant altogether. Such a result would necessarily prompt the same concerns, albeit to a lesser degree, expressed by Justice O’Connor regarding a state’s voluntary efforts to eradicate the effects of past discrimination:
That Congress may identify and redress the effects of society-wide discrimination does not mean that, a fortiori, the States and their political subdivisions are free to decide that such remedies are appropriate. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is an explicit constraint on state power, and the States must undertake any remedial efforts in accordance with that provision. To hold otherwise would be to cede control over the content of the Equal Protection Clause to the 50 state legislatures and their myriad political subdivisions. The mere recitation of a benign or compensatory purpose for the use of a racial classification would essentially entitle the States to exercise the full power of Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and insulate any racial classification from judicial scrutiny under § 1. We believe that such a result would be contrary to the intentions of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, who desired to place clear limits on the States’ use of race as a *482criterion for legislative action, and to have the federal courts enforce those limitations.
City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 490-91, 109 S.Ct. 706, 720, 102 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989) (opinion by O’Connor, J.) (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). See also id. at 510, 109 S.Ct. at 731 (“Absent such findings, there is a danger that a racial classification is merely the product of unthinking stereotypes or a form of racial politics”). While contemporaneous findings may not be required per se, certainly evidence to precisely the opposite effect would militate against a finding of compelling interest to justify the State’s actions. At the very least such evidence raises serious concerns about the State’s underlying motives here and the degree to which its interests can be genuinely characterized as “compelling,” consequently casting doubt on the majority’s conclusions in this regard.11
Of course, even assuming that the State’s findings, such as they were, proved sufficient to warrant remedial action, and further assiiming that the State has made sufficient showings of political cohesiveness and racial bloc voting under Gingles to support a finding of vote dilution under § 2 (showings not made here),12 the evidence presented arguably supports the State’s original contention that the creation of a second “geographically compact” majority-minority district simply was not possible, given the “relatively dispersed” nature of the black population in North Carolina. See Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2820 (noting that blacks constitute a majority of the general population in only five of the State’s 100 counties). Indeed, the impracticality of creating a second geographically compact district is perhaps best demonstrated by the existence of District 12 itself.13 Where there was no reasonable prospect of liability for vote dilution under § 2 given the dispersed nature of North Carolina’s black population, therefore, and thus no “strong basis in evidence” supporting remedial action in connection therewith, the majority’s finding in favor of a compelling interest in that regard is ill-taken.
*483Even if there were sufficient justification to create more than one majority-minority district generally in North Carolina, the very shape of District 12 demonstrates the absence of any compelling interest to create this particular gerrymandered district in order to avoid liability for vote dilution under Gingles, since the concept of geographical compactness was disregarded altogether. Put another way, had the district lines been drawn differently, would blacks living in various parts of what now constitutes District 12 have had a legitimate cause of action under § 2 because their votes had been fragmented or split, thereby diluting their potential voting strength? Clearly not. See Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50, 106 S.Ct. at 2766-67. If the purpose behind the creation of Districts 1 and 12 was to empower a geographically compact, politically cohesive minority population, as the State maintains, then clearly the State failed miserably to attain that purpose, since neither district can be said to incorporate a geographically compact population of any race. To find otherwise would render the Court’s vote dilution test in Gingles a nullity.
In this respect, the Supreme Court’s distinction between “what the law permits, and what it requires” is particularly relevant. Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2830. That the Voting Rights Act permits race-conscious districting in the form of majority-minority districts is clear from the plurality decision in UJO. United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 156-61, 97 S.Ct. at 1005-08 (opinion by White, J.). To find that the Voting Rights Act requires the creation of districts as tortured as those in question here, such that compliance with the Act suffices as a compelling state interest under equal protection analysis, defies logic and reason. The necessary implication of the majority’s holding in this regard, that majority-minority districts may and should be created wherever technologically possible regardless of the geographic consequences thereof, is to impose on states a de facto requirement of proportional representation,14 a result expressly prohibited by case law, see, e.g., Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 76, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 1504, 64 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980) (“The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not require proportional representation as an imperative of political organization”); Freeman v. Pitts, — U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 1430, 1447, 118 L.Ed.2d 108 (1992) (“Racial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake. It is to be pursued when racial imbalance has been caused by a constitutional violation”), and by the statutory provisions of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act itself. See 42 U.S.C. § 1973b (“Provided, that nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population”); see also Gingles, 478 U.S. at 97, 106 S.Ct. at 2790-91 (O’Con-nor, J., concurring in the judgment) (“Requiring that every minority group that could possibly constitute a majority in a single-member district be assigned to such a district would approach a requirement of proportional representation as nearly as is possible within the framework of single-member districts____ This approach is inconsistent with the results test and with § 2’s disclaim*484er of a right to proportional representation”).15
Such a result is untenable and unconstitutional. Where a minority population is relatively dispersed geographically, as is the black population in most parts of North Carolina, and the only means therefore of achieving a majority-minority district is to disfigure the voting districts, the result amounts to a racial quota in pursuit of proportional representation.16 Consequently, as in Wygant, supra, there is “no logical stopping point” to the majority’s theory in this case. Wygant, 476 U.S. at 275, 106 S.Ct. at 1847-48 (plurality opinion) (finding that there was “no logical stopping point” to the District Court’s role model theory, which allowed the Board of Education to engage in discriminatory hiring and layoff practices “long past the point required by any legitimate remedial purpose”); see also Croson, 488 U.S. at 498, 109 S.Ct. at 724 (“ ‘Relief for such an ill-defined wrong could extend until the percentage of public contracts awarded to MBE’s [minority business enterprises] in Richmond mirrored the percentage of minorities in the population as a whole”); Davis, 478 U.S. at 130-31, 106 S.Ct. at 2809-10 (plurality opinion) (“To draw district lines to maximize the representation of each major party would require creating as many safe seats for each party as the demographic and predicted political characteristics of the State would permit”). If North Carolina’s District 12 were in fact required by the Voting Rights Act, as the majority seems to imply, then virtually any district, whatever shape or form, no matter how dispersed its population, would be upheld. Furthermore, under the majority’s theory here, every minority group that could make out the proper showings under Gingles would consequently be entitled to its own single member district, ultimately resulting in systematic political apartheid. See Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827. To the extent that the Voting Rights Act by some stretch of the imagination does require such districts, therefore, I would find the Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional, especially as applied in fight of the distinct harms identified by the Court in Shaw.
In the alternative, even assuming that the State could have made a proper showing as to all of the relevant factors under Gingles, thereby supporting a finding of liability under § 2, and, further, that contemporaneous findings to that effect by the General Assembly are not required to support the State’s burden herein (or, more precisely, that the State’s actual beliefs to the contrary do not *485preclude a finding to that effect now), it only seems logical that whatever “remedy” the State imposes in anticipation thereof must be adequately tailored to the “wrong” to which it is addressed. See also City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156, 213, 100 S.Ct. 1548, 1580, 64 L.Ed.2d 119 (1980) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“These precedents are carefully formulated around a historic tenet of the law that in order to invoke a remedy, there must be a wrong”). That is, even if compliance with § 2 constitutes a sufficient compelling interest for the creation of majority-minority districts generally, certainly the degree to which the State’s proffered remedy — specifically the creation of Districts 1 and 12 — in fact addresses the anticipated violation here is at least relevant to whether the plan is “narrowly tailored.” To hold otherwise would effectively read the “geographical compactness” requirement out of the Court’s § 2 jurisprudence altogether, since a gerrymandered district conceivably could always be drawn to incorporate enough black voters to constitute a majority in a single-member district, no matter how dispersed they were throughout the State. Surely this was not the Court’s intention in Gingles when it made compact geography at least legally relevant in vote dilution cases, if not required.17 The relevance of district shape to the issue of whether North Carolina’s redistricting plan is narrowly tailored will be discussed more fully infra.
I would make one final general observation here before moving on with the analysis. By its plain language, the Voting Rights Act protects nothing more, and certainly nothing less, than the “opportunity” to participate in the political process and indeed specifically disavows any guarantee of proportional representation. Section 2(b) of the Act provides that:
A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered____
42 U.S.C. § 1973(b) (emphasis added).
Since there are no allegations here that blacks in North Carolina are currently prevented from participating per se in the political process, from registering and exercising their right to vote, then the only salient evidence presented by the Defendants and Defendant-Intervenors here regarding a violation of § 2 would seem to be the extent to which members of the black population have been able to elect representatives of their choice or at least had the opportunity to do so. If we are to assume that the candidates of choice for blacks in North Carolina have always been black themselves, as Defendants imply, then we would have to find that the opportunity to elect such candidates has been denied them, given the congressional election results over the course of North Carolina’s political history. See also Gingles, 478 U.S. at 93, 106 S.Ct. at 2788-89 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (“electoral success has now emerged, under the Court’s standard, as the linchpin of vote dilution claims”).
But in assessing vote dilution, it is not at all clear why the Court should not take into account political influence as well — after all, *486“the power to influence the political process is not limited to winning elections.” Davis, 478 U.S. at 132, 106 S.Ct. at 2810 (plurality opinion); see also Gingles, 478 U.S. at 94-100, 106 S.Ct. at 2789-92 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (otherwise “the Court’s test for measuring voting strength and its test for vote dilution, operating in tandem, come closer to an absolute requirement of proportional representation than Congress intended when it codified the results test in § 2”). Moreover, § 2 expressly states that electoral success is only one circumstance which may be considered in vote dilution claims, leaving the door open to other kinds of evidence.18 Of course, there was no evidence presented to this Court regarding political influence per se, and the Court therefore has no basis on which to make a determination with respect thereto. But certainly such evidence, admitted for that limited purpose rather than as a testament to historical discrimination generally, would have been relevant to the question of the State’s potential liability under § 2. For the courts to ignore such evidence, properly presented, is to limit unnecessarily the intended reach of the Voting Rights Act, thereby prompting legitimate concerns about proportional representation.
In sum, then, I dissent from the majority’s finding here that, under the circumstances presented, North Carolina had a compelling interest in complying with § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The State lacked a sufficient basis’ in evidence reasonably to anticipate liability under § 2, and the remedial legislation allegedly enacted in response thereto, Chapter 7, was consequently unwarranted. Plaintiffs have therefore met their ultimate burden of persuasion. Moreover, the fact that the General Assembly failed to make explicit findings as to its remedial intent, and now brings before the Court only weak posthoc rationalizations, precludes finding in favor of the Defendants on this issue. Finally, even if remedial action had been warranted, the threshold requirement in Gingles of geographical compactness must at least have implications for whether North Carolina’s redistricting plan can ultimately be described as “narrowly tailored,” an issue which I discuss in more detail infra.
B. Compliance With Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
North Carolina’s next argument in support of its redistricting plan derives from its statutory duty to comply with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act. More specifically, the majority here finds that the State had a compelling interest to comply with the Attorney General’s preclearanee requirements under § 5 by demonstrating that its revised plan (Chapter 7) had neither the “purpose ... [nor] the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color____” 42 U.S.C. § 1973c; see also 28 C.F.R. § 52.52.19 As the majority observes, there are two separate prongs to the § 5 standard, but I, like the majority, find the “effect” prong inapplicable in the case presently before us. As to the “purpose” prong of the § 5 standard, I agree that an analysis thereunder essentially duplicates the analysis under the constitutional vote dilution standard, namely requiring a showing that the proposed redistricting plan was not designed to dilute minority voting strength. See ante at 441 n. 31. This is essentially the identical argument offered by the State in connection with its alleged duty to comply with § 2, discussed supra; the only material difference, of course, is that the State’s interest here in complying with § 5 stems not from a desire to avoid future liability under the Voting Rights Act but from an administrative goal to secure pre*487clearance from the Attorney General.20 Especially in light of the Attorney General’s rejection of North Carolina’s original plan, the State argues that it consequently had a compelling interest to comply with its obligations under § 5 as interpreted and enforced by the Attorney General in connection with its submission of Chapter 7.
Blind deference to the administrative findings of the United States Attorney General cannot render the State’s conduct here immune from constitutional scrutiny, however. Since the General Assembly had the option of subsequently seeking preclearance in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, see 42 U.S.C. § 1973c, and expressly considered such a course of action, its choice not to do so but instead to capitulate to the Attorney General’s recommendations effectively negates the argument that the creation of Chapter 7 in its present form was required per se under § 5. In other words, reliance on the Attorney General’s interpretation and application of the Voting Rights Act, without regard to the accuracy or constitutionality thereof, is insufficient in itself to constitute a compelling state interest. Instead, there should be some independent basis for the State’s apprehension of vote dilution sufficient to justify remedial action to correct it.21 Otherwise the majority’s holding in this respect would vest the Department of Justice with unbridled and unprecedented discretion, since under these circumstances at least the Department of Justice’s findings would be deemed conclusive, and the Attorney General would further enjoy a de facto ability to determine the constitutional scope of federal legislation, heretofore a responsibility reserved for the courts.22 For obvious reasons this is an altogether wholly unacceptable result.
In my opinion, then, the analysis here is subsumed within the analysis described above for vote dilution under § 2. Therefore, I would find that, at least in the case as it comes before us, the State should demon*488strate that it had some independent basis for its apprehension that its initial redistrieting plan was designed to dilute minority voting strength in an unconstitutional manner, thereby requiring it to take appropriate remedial measures in response thereto.23 The State may indeed have had an independently compelling reason to create a second majority-minority district, if in fact the failure to do so would have amounted to vote dilution. Whether the failure to create any majority-minority districts or these districts in particular would have amounted to vote dilution again depends upon the State’s potential liability under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as discussed supra. For the reasons stated above, again I would find either that the State could not have had a reasonable apprehension of liability under § 2, given the dispersed nature of the black population in North Carolina, or that, in the alternative, if the black population was in fact geographically compact enough to support liability under § 2, that such compactness must at least have implications for the shapes of the districts consequently created to remedy the § 2 violation in order to be “narrowly tailored.”
Finally, it is interesting to note that of North Carolina’s 100 counties, only 40 of those were subject to § 5’s preclearance requirements at the time Chapter 7 was enacted. Any redistrieting plan that affected all or a portion of these 40 counties would of course require preclearance, and such plans must by necessity be considered as a whole, not on a district-by-district basis. Obviously, if only one county in North Carolina were subject to the requirements of § 5, however, compliance therewith would not constitute a compelling interest for the creation of a gerrymandered district located elsewhere in the State. Here, of the 40 counties covered by § 5, none is entirely included within the Twelfth District, and only two such counties — Gaston and Guilford — are even partially included in District 12. Stip.Paras. 108-11.24 To argue that the State therefore had a compelling interest to create these particular gerrymandered districts in order to comply with § 5’s preclearance requirements defies common sense and would seem to defeat the purposes served by the Voting Rights Act. Insofar as the majority finds to the contrary, I dissent.
C. Remedy Past Discrimination
The final justification offered by the State for its racially gerrymandered districts is its interest in eradicating the effects of past racial discrimination. A state’s voluntary efforts to remedy discrete and particular instances of discrimination is indeed a laudable endeavor and should not be discouraged. See Wygant, 476 U.S. at 289-91, 106 S.Ct. at 1855-56 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). Of course, a general showing of societal discrimination alone is not sufficient to justify a racial classification, see id. at 274-75, 106 S.Ct. at 1847-48 (opinion by Powell, J.), and the State must have had a “strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary.” Id. at 277, 106 S.Ct. at 1848-49. I concur in the majority’s finding here that the State has failed to demonstrate any basis in evidence for a conclusion that such remedial action was necessary, especially since the State has clearly demonstrated that it would not have enacted Chapter 7 hut for the Attorney General’s rejection of Chapter 601.25
*489However, where Congress has sought to implement a legislative remedial scheme as decidedly broad and far-reaching as the Voting Eights Act, I question whether, as the majority here holds, a state can be found to maintain a compelling interest to exceed this federal mandate in efforts to achieve racial equality. See ante at 443-144. As the Court in Shaw clearly recognized, “only three Justices in UJO were prepared to say that States have a significant interest in minimizing the consequences of racial bloc voting apart from the requirements of the Voting Act.” Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2832. Significantly, as the Court further observed, “those three Justices specifically concluded that race-based districting, as a response to racially polarized voting, is constitutionally permissible only when the State ‘employ[s] sound districting principles [such as compactness and population equality],’ and only when the affected racial group’s ‘residential patterns afford the opportunity of creating districts in which they will be in the majority.’” Id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2832 (quoting United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 168, 97 S.Ct. at 1011 (opinion by White, J.)). Given North Carolina’s total disregard for certain “sound districting principles,” such as compactness and contiguity, I am compelled to find that the State’s alleged efforts here to eradicate the effects of past discrimination transcend that which is expressly required by the Voting Eights Act.
The rationale behind the Court’s apparent skepticism in Shaw in this regard should be obvious. It is by now a fundamental tenet in our equal protection jurisprudence that any effort by a state to remedy past discrimination must be carefully tailored, gauged to the specific past harm being alleviated. Croson, 488 U.S. at 507-08, 109 S.Ct. at 729 (majority opinion); Wygant, 476 U.S. at 274, 106 S.Ct. at 1847 (plurality opinion). Where the past harm is as undefined as it is here, described in relatively abstract terms of vote “dilution” rather than outright “denial,” however, there is the very real danger that the remedy imposed may actually become part of the problem, especially in light of the distinctive harms associated with racially gerrymandered districts generally. See Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827-32; see also Croson, 488 U.S. at 493, 109 S.Ct. at 721-22 (opinion by O’Connor, J.) (“Classifications based on race carry a danger of stigmatic harm”); Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 298, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 2752, 57 L.Ed.2d 750 (1978) (opinion by Powell, J.) (“preferential programs may only reinforce common stereotypes holding that certain groups are unable to achieve success without special protection based on a factor bearing no relationship to individual worth”). Accordingly, given the pitfalls necessarily inherent in any voluntary remedial undertaking concerning minority voting practices, I would find that the State has no compelling interest to address past discrimination in voting practices beyond that required by the Voting Eights Act, the federal remedy mandated by Congress.
III.

Not Narrowly Tailored

Assuming that the district lines employed by the State of North Carolina here are not inherently unconstitutional, and further assuming that the State had a compelling interest for its otherwise unconstitutional conduct, the next question is whether the redistricting plan at issue here is narrowly tailored to further that interest. I find that the districts here, while keenly tailored, are by no means “narrowly tailored” as that term is employed in Equal Protection law.
To what extent North Carolina’s redistricting plan is narrowly tailored of course depends upon what compelling interest is advanced to justify the plan. After all, “[r]acial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification.” Wygant, 476 U.S. at 280, 106 S.Ct. at 1850 (plurality opinion) (quoting Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 537, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2805, 65 L.Ed.2d 902 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting)). The majority again inexplicably claims that district shape is irrelevant beyond its significance as an indication of discriminatory intent, thereby unwarrantedly delimiting the scope of the Court’s opinion in Shaw. See ante at 449. But while such traditional districting principles as compact*490ness and contiguity may not be “constitutionally required” per se, see Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827, they are plainly relevant at least in a relative sense in assessing whether there were less restrictive means available to the General Assembly during the redistricting process. See Bridgeport Coalition for Fair Representation v. City of Bridgeport, 26 F.3d 271, 278 (2d Cir.1994) (“A purported remedy for perceived violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act must include consideration of both racial fairness and traditional districting principles”); Marylanders for Fair Representation, 849 F.Supp. at 1053 (“although a State can — and at times must — -place great weight on race when redistricting, it may not do so to the exclusion of all traditional, nonracial districting principles, leaving a district that rationally can be understood only as ‘an effort to classify and separate votes by race’ ”) (citing Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2828).
North Carolina’s alleged interests in complying with §§ 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act are essentially based on the assumption that, but for the creation of these gerrymandered districts, the State would have been subject to a § 2 vote dilution claim or would not have been able to secure preclearance from the Attorney General under § 5. The first question the Court must ask, then, is to what extent the State’s proposed “remedy” here, namely the enactment of Chapter 7, successfully addresses the anticipated underlying “injury,” namely minority vote dilution. United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 1066, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987) (opinion by Brennan, J.) (Court must consider “the necessity for the relief and the efficacy of alternative remedies”). The Court in Paradise undertook a similar endeavor in order to assess whether the remedy imposed in that case was narrowly tailored:
To evaluate the District Court’s determination that it was necessary to order the promotion of eight whites and eight blacks to the rank of corporal at the time of the motion to enforce, we must examine the purposes the order was intended to serve.
Id. (emphasis in original). Likewise, we must evaluate the State’s asserted purposes here in order to determine whether the districts at issue are necessary in connection therewith.
As discussed supra, one of the threshold requirements of a § 2 vote dilution claim, and hence necessarily a factor in the Attorney General’s § 5 preclearance considerations, is that the minority population at issue must be “geographically compact.” See Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50, 106 S.Ct. at 2766. The logical implication of the Court’s opinion in Gingles, and of the Congressional mandate expressed in § 2, is that if a politically cohesive and geographically compact minority population in fact exists, the State then has some obligation to incorporate said population in a majority-minority district in order to avoid liability under the Voting Rights Act. Growe, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 1084. Assuming arguendo that there is a sufficiently “geographically compact” minority population in North Carolina to sustain a § 2 vote dilution claim, and thus a compelling reason for the State to take appropriate remedial measures in connection therewith in order to avoid liability and to secure preclearance under the Voting Rights Act, it would be difficult if not impossible to argue that the State here successfully incorporated compact minority populations within the boundaries of its two majority-minority districts. Indeed, one need only glance at the map to confirm that District 12 fails to accommodate a compact population of any race. In this context the precise shapes of the districts are relevant because they provide a gauge for the State’s remedial success — and from the looks of Districts 1 and 12, the State failed miserably. When districts are as strung out as Districts 1 and 12, lacking all inherent integrity, they cease being districts at all, instead merely patching together islands of voters with only a legislative intent to group predetermined numbers of voters by race. Creation of such districts was by no means “necessary” in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act.26
*491The State argues that Plaintiffs’ submission at trial of an alternative district plan with more geographically compact districts in itself demonstrates the State’s potential liability under § 2, since geographically compact majority-minority districts were clearly possible. In what can only be described as a legal leap of faith, however, the State, with the majority’s blessing, see ante at 454-455 n. 50, asserts that whatever districts it actually created to preempt liability under the Voting Rights Act need not reflect or incorporate the specific compact minority populations which would allegedly trigger the § 2 violation. This line of contention is devoid of both logic and common sense and hardly merits this Court’s attention, much less its endorsement. I must conclude that the State “went beyond what was reasonably necessary to avoid [vote dilution]” and that North Carolina’s reapportionment plan consequently is not narrowly tailored to accomplish that goal. See Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2831.
The majority here identifies five other factors relevant to determining whether the State’s remedial scheme is sufficiently tailored to survive strict scrutiny. With respect to the first factor, I agree with the majority that a state that has a compelling interest in complying with the Voting Rights Act obviously has no completely race-neutral means of accomplishing that goal. Equally obvious, however, is the fact that the North Carolina General Assembly here failed to utilize more conventional district shapes that, if not inherently “race neutral,” at least would have been more likely to have been perceived as such by the voters. After all, “reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter.” Id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827. Again, where it is clear that a grossly disfigured majority-minority district poses dangers qualitatively distinct from those posed by a compact majority-minority district, the extent to which a redistricting plan reflects the use of race should have a significant bearing on our analysis. The very purpose of narrow tailoring, of course, is to promote the accomplishment of the remedy at minimum expense to other important interests, including contiguity and compactness. Where, as here, the State completely disregards less offensive alternatives in favor of a redistrieting plan as contorted as the one presently before us, I find it difficult to characterize such a plan as “narrowly tailored.” See Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729 (“there does not appear to have been any consideration of the use of race-neutral means to increase minority business participation in city contracting”).
With respect to the second factor, the majority here finds North Carolina’s redistricting plan more analogous to a “flexible goal” than a “strict quota.” See ante at 446-447. While the “remedial” device employed by the State here is distinguishable from more traditional numerical quotas, Chapter 7 in many ways resembles the strict quota device struck down in Croson, supra. A redistricting plan that gerrymanders a given population in order to achieve a certain electoral result is closely analogous to hiring or promotion quotas designed to achieve a certain racial profile in the work force.27 Given the absence of *492any “logical stopping point” for the creation of majority-minority districts pursuant to the majority’s reading of the Voting Rights Act here, these districts “cannot be said to be narrowly tailored to any goal, except perhaps outright racial balancing.” Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729. As discussed supra, however, proportional representation is clearly not a legitimate objective, either for legislative pursuit or for judicial encouragement. Cf. Paradise, 480 U.S. at 178, 107 S.Ct. at 1070 (opinion by Brennan, J.) (“The one-for-one requirement evaporated at the ranks of corporal and sergeant upon implementation of promotion procedures without an adverse impact, demonstrating that it is not a disguised means to achieve racial balance”) (emphasis added). And just as courts have struck down extreme quota devices that bear no rational relationship to any goal other than outright racial balancing, see, e.g., Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729, so too should we strike down extreme gerrymanders that promote nothing short of proportional representation.
The majority’s analysis of the final factor, the impact of the enacted districts on the rights of third parties, likewise gives cause for concern. See Paradise, 480 U.S. at 171, 107 S.Ct. at 1066-67 (opinion by Brennan, J.); Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 514, 100 S.Ct. at 2793 (Powell, J., concurring). Given the unique breed of harms caused by these racially gerrymandered districts as identified so forcefully in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Shaw, harms suffered by racially gerrymandered district residents and non-gerrymandered district residents alike, I simply cannot subscribe to the view that such districts are “narrowly tailored” where in fact more compact alternative districts were feasible.
Here, the burden is not placed on innocent non-minorities (in terms of any denial of privileges, benefits, etc.) so much as it is placed on the very minorities that these districts were presumably created to empower. See Croson, 488 U.S. at 516-17, 109 S.Ct. at 733-34 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and coneurring in the judgment); cf. Wygant, 476 U.S. at 283-84, 106 S.Ct. at 1851-52 (plurality opinion). The stigma associated with such districts is real and tangible and cognizable under the Fourteenth Amendment per the Court’s opinion in Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2828, and even per the majority’s opinion here. See ante at 423-427. See also Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 545 and n. 17, 100 S.Ct. at 2809 and n. 17 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Croson, 488 U.S. at 493, 109 S.Ct. at 721-22 (“Classifications based on race carry a danger of stigmatie harm”); id. at 516-17, 109 S.Ct. at 733-34 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); Bakke, 438 U.S. at 298, 98 S.Ct. at 2752 (opinion by Powell, J.); cf. Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. F.C.C., 497 U.S. 547, 601, 110 S.Ct. 2997, 3028, 111 L.Ed.2d 445 (1990) (Stevens, J., concurring). Also, the stigmatie burden here is on all minorities, not just on certain nonminorities. Cf. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U.S. at 596-97, 110 S.Ct. at 3025-26. Given the Supreme Court’s obvious concern for district shape as expressed in Shaw, the burden of these district shapes cannot be dismissed as “relatively light” or “diffuse,” as the majority’s opinion here so easily does. Id. at 600, 110 S.Ct. at 3027-28 (citing Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 484, 100 S.Ct. at 2777-78 (opinion by Burger, C.J.)). Rather, I would find that North Carolina’s racially gerrymandered districts continue to “impose disproportionate harm on the interests, or unnecessarily trammel the rights, of innocent individuals directly and adversely affected by a plan’s racial preference.” Wygant, 476 U.S. at 287, 106 S.Ct. at 1854 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). As evidenced by the alternative redistricting plans submitted by Plaintiffs at trial, there were “less intrusive” means available to the General Assembly. See id. at 283, 106 S.Ct. at 1852. To characterize the burden to third parties here as “marginal unfairness,” as the majority does, see ante at -, is to ignore the clear implications of the *493Supreme Court’s opinion in Shaw.28 Accordingly, this Court’s decision should recognize the significance to third-party voters and citizens of the Supreme Court’s observations that “[b]y perpetuating such notions [of racial stereotypes], a racial gerrymander may exacerbate the very patterns of racial bloc voting that majority-minority districting is sometimes said to counteract,” Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827, and that “elected officials are more likely to believe that their primary obligation is to represent only the members of that group, rather than their constituency as a whole. This is altogether antithetical to our system of representative democracy.” Id. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2827.
Moreover, the majority’s opinion, without justification, arbitrarily limits the criteria for evaluating North Carolina’s redistricting plan to “constitutionally-mandated” redistricting principles, rendering all other considerations de minimis. See ante at 448-449. But it is not at all clear why redistricting principles which are not constitutionally-mawdaied per se should not be at least relevant and even significant in assessing a plan’s constitutionality, especially where the constitutional relevance of such redistricting principles as compactness and contiguity has so recently been declared by the Supreme Court.29 If we as a Court are to give any force at all to the mandate issued by the Supreme Court in this case, as I believe we must, then we must find in light of the cited language in Shaw that these districts are not “the most exact connection between justification and classification” as required in Wygant, supra. More compact variations were possible, and the State’s redistricting plan is not sufficiently “narrowly tailored” to survive strict scrutiny.30
The majority also makes three arguments as to why, for practical reasons, courts should not consider notions of compactness and contiguity in assessing the constitutionality of voting districts. First, the majority asserts that such traditional districting principles have “little inherent value” in the districting process since they are no longer necessary to ensure fair and effective representation. See ante at 451. The majority’s conclusion in this regard, however, is misplaced. The evidence at trial amply demonstrated that the combination of modern computer technology and voter-specific census data, readily available today and used by the legislature in creating Chapter 7, permits the creation of districts of unreasonable length and complexity. See generally testimony of Gerry Cohen, Tr. pp. 281-652. Indeed, notwithstanding the potentially self-serving testimonies of those eongresspersons elected to *494represent Districts 1 and 12, it cannot be gainsaid that 160 miles is long for such a lanky district as District 12; indeed, it is sufficiently long to be served by no less than three national airports and three television markets. District 1 is equally ungainly, spread-eagled over a vast portion of Eastern North Carolina, from Virginia to South Carolina. These facts make fair representation virtually impossible in Districts 1 and 12, a conclusion shared at one time by North Carolina’s legislative representatives in marshalling support for Chapter 601. No less extreme would be a district that ran the length of the California coastline, some 800 miles in length — indeed, the configurations of voting districts would be limited only by politicians’ imaginations.31 And while citizens of such districts would inevitably share certain concerns and interests, they would be denied the quality of representation inherent in a more geographically compact district, one that respected the established political, social, and economic communities already in existence.32 So while it may be true, as the majority observes, that geography is no longer as important as it once was to the districting process because of improved transportation and communication, neither is it entirely irrelevant or insignificant.33
The majority’s second and third arguments, regarding the absence of manageable judicial standards and the prospect of undue interference by the federal judiciary, respectively, are likewise unpersuasive.34 Even under the majority opinion’s narrow interpretation of Shaw, determining whether or not a given district successfully incorporates a “geographically compact” minority population, and therefore sufficiently addresses any potential § 2 violation, regardless of the aesthetics thereof, is a decision which is appropriately within the purview of the federal courts and which is subject to a “relatively simple and judicially manageable” standard. See Davis, 478 U.S. at 149, 106 S.Ct. at 2819 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment). And while concepts like compactness and contiguity may not be scientifically ascertainable, even the majority here concedes that certain of the districts before us could never be characterized as “compact” by any definition of that word. Indeed, the obvious difficulty in distinguishing between permissible hiring or promotional goals and impermissi*495ble quotas in other affirmative action contexts has never prevented courts from striking down remedies as irrational as the one presently before us. Where it is clear that the State has in fact crossed that line, it is unnecessary for us to decide, for the purposes of this case, at what point the State crossed it.
Although assessing the merits of future gerrymandering cases may prove to be difficult at times, that is not sufficient reason in itself to abdicate our responsibility to do so here. An assessment of “geographical compactness” can be no more problematic or standardless here than under the vote dilution test articulated by the Supreme Court in Gingles, supra, and in fact courts have already embarked on such endeavors since the Supreme Court’s decision in Shaw. See, e.g., Marylanders for Fair Representation, 849 F.Supp. at 1052-56 (finding that district at issue “is not only compact in its shape and appearance, but moreover reflects the reasonable balancing of numerous legitimate redistricting principles”). Indeed, the majority’s opinion here successfully accounts for the stigmatic harms associated with gerrymandered districts in its analysis of standing, but it inexplicably fails to address such harms in weighing the ultimate constitutionality of Chapter 7. Thus, the majority would find that while residents of a racially gerrymandered voting district would always enjoy standing to bring suit, such standing would be of no avail so long as said district complied with certain “constitutionally-mandated” districting principles, regardless of its shape and the stigmatic harms associated therewith. The plain language of the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s opinion in Shaw does not support such a reading.
I therefore reiterate my earlier observation in this case, Shaw v. Barr, 808 F.Supp. 461 (E.D.N.C.1992), that it falls upon the courts to set forth constitutionally valid standards by which race-conscious redistricting may be implemented, and that it is not enough to leave these standards to the vicissitudes of “politics.” Id. at 480-81 (Voorhees, C.J., dissenting). As the majority here recognizes, Congress has presumably balanced the need for “affirmative action” in the voting context against the potential harms thereof, resulting in the enactment and subsequent extension of the Voting Rights Act. But while it is true that every variety of “affirmative action” program necessarily relies on some offsetting form of the very discrimination such program is designed to combat, the remedial efforts undertaken here are particularly troublesome. See Paradise, 480 U.S. at 199, 107 S.Ct. at 1081 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“There is simply no justification for the use of racial preferences if the purpose of the [legislation] could be achieved without their use because ‘facial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification’ ” (quoting Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 537, 100 S.Ct. at 2805 (Stevens, J., dissenting))). As the Court in Shaw recognized, the essential thrust of the State’s various arguments here is that “the deliberate creation of majority-minority districts is the most precise way— indeed the only effective way — to .overcome the effects of racially polarized voting.” Shaw, — U.S. at-, 113 S.Ct. at 2832. But I find it curious that the sole cure proposed for racially polarized voting and the effects thereof is a state-endorsed election system that is based on, and indeed whose success ultimately depends upon, racially polarized voting. See ante at 475 (“We have concluded instead that, under controlling law, [race-based districting] is a justifiable invocation of a concededly drastic, historically conditioned remedy in order to continue the laborious struggle to break free of a legacy of official discrimination and racial bloc voting”).
It is often remarked that the vote is one of the most critical features of a representative democracy and therefore one of our most fundamental rights. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 1381-82, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964) (describing the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner as “preservative of other basic civil and political rights”). It is also true that, by definition, a racially gerrymandered congressional district is a highly visible feature of the political landscape, visible to the American public in a way that many remedial programs are not. Indeed, it is just this kind *496of visibility that concerned the Court in Shaw in the first place. It is crucial to remember also that racial classifications are by their very nature presumptively invalid. City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 75-76 and n. 23, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 1504-05 and n. 23 (1980); see also Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 523, 100 S.Ct. at 2797-98 (Stewart, J., dissenting) (“Under our Constitution, any official action that treats a person differently on account of his race or ethnic origin is inherently suspect and presumptively invalid”); Paradise, 480 U.S. at 193, 107 S.Ct. at 1078 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment) (“In such cases [not involving any proven violations of law] the governmental decisionmaker who would make race-conscious decisions must overcome a strong presumption against them”). Therefore, I recount with emphasis the Supreme Court’s observation in Shaw that three Justices in United Jewish Organizations “specifically concluded that race-based districting, as a response to racially polarized voting, is constitutionally permissible only when the State ‘employ[s] sound districting principles,’ and only when the affected racial group’s ‘residential patterns afford the opportunity of creating districts in which they will be in the majority.’ ” Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2832 (quoting United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 168, 97 S.Ct. at 1011 (opinion by White, J.)) (emphasis added). Therefore, where the vote is concerned, and where the State’s remedial efforts are as visibly pernicious as they are here, I finally must conclude that such efforts simply go beyond that which is permitted by the Constitution.
IV.

Conclusion

[E]ven in the pursuit of remedial objectives, an explicit policy of assignment by race may serve to stimulate our society’s latent race consciousness, suggesting the utility and propriety of basing decisions on a factor that ideally bears no relationship to an individual’s worth or needs____
United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 173, 97 S.Ct. at 1014 (Brennan, J., concurring in part). That our society’s race consciousness persists, latent or otherwise, is indeed a regrettable phenomenon. The question of whether the achievement of a “color-blind” society is imminent or remote at this stage in our collective history has been the subject of considerable debate. The power of this Court, however, is more limited in that regard than some might hope, and our task consequently more mundane: to insure that the law as applied affords equal protection to every citizen.
The evidence presented in this case overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the controlling officials in the General Assembly adopted the admitted racial gerrymander to create two minority-majority congressional districts in satisfaction of a numerical quota consistent with an intent to maximize the incumbency of all congresspersons affiliated with the controlling political party. The efforts of the Defendants to justify their actions in that respect since this litigation began, with talk of homogenous communities of interest and a perceived (but not hitherto expressed) need to correct past inequities, are lame attempts to reconstruct that truth. Why, then, does the majority lend credence to the sparse evidence supporting the State’s position?
Aside from the misreading of Shaw embodied in its apparent adherence to Justice White’s dissenting opinion, see supra at 477-478, at times the majority seems influenced by the notion that this case is merely a rehash of Pope v. Blue, where the instant gerrymander was held to reside in the political thicket, there to remain untouched by the judicial hand. That would explain the majority’s indulgence towards the latest public position of a legislature which changes its assertions regarding the underlying facts as readily as it does its legal positions advanced in their support. But the Shaw decision requires that this Court address the underlying issues with greater seriousness of purpose than did the legislature. An admitted exercise in the nitty gritty of politics and power the majority opinion would elevate to heights of sensitivity and high purpose that the legislature simply never reached. The majority’s findings of fact in these matters are decidedly contrary to the weight of the *497evidence, and its conclusions of law are accordingly misplaced.
I conclude with an acute observation by Justice Kennedy in a recent case involving distinct but analogous issues: “I regret that after a century of judicial opinions we interpret the Constitution to do no more than move us from ‘separate but equal’ to ‘unequal but benign.’ ” Metro Broadcasting, 497 U.S. at 637-38, 110 S.Ct. at 3047 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Under the majority opinion, one fears, North Carolinians must live for an indefinite period of time with congressional districts in which the races are intentionally made “separate but equal” without sufficient justification. For all the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Justice Souter remarks in his dissent in Shaw that “[t]he shape of the district at issue in this case is indeed so bizarre that few other examples are ever likely to carry the unequivocal implication of impermissible use of race that the Court finds here.” Shaw v. Reno, - U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 2816, 2848, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (1993) (Souter, J., dissenting).

. Likewise, Justice Stevens argues in dissent that "[e]vidence of the district's shape is therefore convincing, but it is also cumulative, and, for our purposes, irrelevant.” Shaw, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2844, 125 L.Ed.2d 511 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

. Hence the majority's observation that the Equal Protection claim here "is, in effect, the same basic claim that the Court has recognized in other contexts in which race-based remedial measures, or 'affirmative action,’ undertaken by state actors have been challenged, typically by members of the majority race claiming 'reverse discrimination.’ ” See ante at 423. However, the majority disregards the fact that it was the shapes of North Carolina's congressional districts that prompted the instant litigation in the first place, and that it was likewise district shape, as a manifestation of legislative intent, that gave the Supreme Court considerable cause for concern on appeal. Nonetheless, the majority’s opinion inexplicably renders district shape irrelevant altogether under the facts of this case. For the reasons discussed here, I would find that the Equal Protection claim recognized by the Court in Shaw is substantively distinguishable from more familiar "reverse discrimination" claims.

. The majority's reliance on discriminatory intent alone cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s express reservation of the question of whether the deliberate creation of majority-minority districts, without more, always triggers strict scrutiny. See Shaw, - U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2828 ("we express no view as to whether 'the intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more,’ always gives rise to an equal protection claim").

. Indeed, the testimony of District 12's congressional representative, Mel Watt, speaks for itself. See, e.g., Tr. pp. 999-1001 ("representing a district that you are consistent with in your philosophies allows you to be consistent in voting your conscience without budding under or catering, as you said my statement said, to other interests that may not predominate in my district [such as the ‘business or white community ']”) (emphasis added).

. The majority’s opinion cites a host of legislative concerns, including incumbent protection, equal-population requirements, and district homogeneity, that affected the specific contours of the districts at issue here. See ante at 473. That such concerns played a role in the redistricting process is indisputable. Equally indisputable, *479however, is the fact that race, and race alone, was the sine qua non not only for the need for majority-minority districts generally, but also for the need to draw district lines of such peculiar shape, a fact of which the majority too easily loses sight.

. Curiously enough, the majority’s opinion seems to recognize the significance of "stigmatic” harm in its discussion on standing. See ante at 423-427 (“In other contexts, the Supreme Court has recognized that a state's use of racial classifications necessarily inflicts 'stigmatic' injury, which, though 'abstract' in the sense that it cannot easily be quantified, is sufficient ‘injury in fact' to give any citizen who has been 'personally denied equal treatment' by such a classification standing to challenge it under the Equal Protection Clause”) (citations omitted). Why the significance of such stigmatic harm is not recognized by the majority in the present context is puzzling, although not altogether surprising given the majority opinion’s feverish concluding characterization of the case before us. See ante at 475 ("The question in the end is whether a deliberately race-based districting plan enacted by an overwhelmingly white legislature in one of the former Confederate states in order to comply with its understanding of the commands of national law enacted to enforce the guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments shall be declared unconstitutional at the behest of five white voters whose voting rights have been in no legally cognizable way harmed by the plan").

. The majority contends that the redistricting plan enacted by North Carolina here is most closely analogous to a "voluntarily” adopted affirmative action plan for purposes of analysis under the Equal Protection clause, and as such may require less scrutiny than a "judicially-imposed” plan. See ante at 434 n. 21. If, as the majority maintains, the State alternatively faced liability under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act or denial of preclearance by the Department of Justice, I fail to see how its actions were "voluntary.” The majority's opinion elsewhere characterizes the Voting Rights Act as an exercise of Congress’ "constitutional mandate” pursuant to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Ante at 100. Accordingly, a state's obligation to comply with the Act would hardly seem elective. The distinction here between "voluntary" and "judicially-imposed” remedial plans on the facts of this case should therefore play no role in the legal analysis.

. In support of the State's first redistricting proposal (Chapter 601), and in reply to certain comments filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arguing in favor of a second majority-minority district pursuant to Gingles, supra, Gerry Cohen, the Director of Legislative Drafting for the North Carolina General Assembly, submitted a memorandum dated October 14, 1991 (hereinafter the “Memorandum”), to the Department of Justice on behalf of House Redistricting Committee co-Chairman Toby Fitch, Senate Redistricting Committee Chairman Dennis Winner, and House Speaker Daniel T. Blue. In rejecting the ACLU’s contentions regarding a second district, the State’s Memorandum first noted that the findings in Gingles concerning North Carolina’s racial disparities were ten years old and based on statistics dating back to 1978. Stip. Ex. 25 at 16. It asserted that “the gains [in black voter registration] that the three-judge court had said had not occurred by the time of the 1983 trial have now occurred.” Id. At various points in the Memorandum, moreover, the State proclaimed “an end to any discrimination in voter registration” and "an end to the kind of discriminatory history recited both [sic] in the Congressional history of the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act." Id. at ---, -.
As for racial appeals in political campaigns, another consideration under Gingles, the State asserted that "aside from the racial appeals attributed to Jesse Helms in 1990, the ACLU shows no evidence of them in the past decade since Gingles." Id. at-. The State further disputed the ACLU's allegations concerning continued polarized voting in North Carolina, pointing to recent black electoral successes in "Wake, Durham, Cumberland, Guilford, Forsyth, Orange, etc.” counties, leading to a "dramatic" increase in the number of black elected officials between 1980 and 1990. Id. at -, -, -, -.
The State also rejected the contention that a second reasonably compact majority-minority district was feasible. In its Memorandum the State noted that "Gingles requires that a district be geographically compact in order to satisfy one of the prongs of the initial test.” Id. at -. Citing Dillard v. Baldwin County Bd. of Educ., 686 F.Supp. 1459, 1466 (M.D.Ala.1988), the State argued that a district is not compact if it is so spread out or convoluted that there is no sense of community, or that its representatives and members could not efficiently stay in touch with each other or easily tell who lived in the district. Id. The State further asserted that a district is likewise not compact if it is "materially stranger in shape than some of the districts contained in the enacted plan.” Id. at - (quoting Jeffers v. Clinton, 730 F.Supp. 196, 207 (E.D.Ark. 1989), aff'd, 498 U.S. 1019, 111 S.Ct. 662, 112 L.Ed.2d 656 (1991)).
The State therefore asserted that all of the ACLU's proposals for a second majority-minority district failed the "compactness tests” described in Gingles, Dillard, and Jeffers. Id. The State also claimed that the creation of an additional majority-minority district would require "stitch[ing] together dozens of disconnected black concentrations,” and “snaking all over everywhere at the [census] block level.” Id. at ---. The State specifically criticized a second majority-minority district proposed by Republican House Member David Balmer as "meander[ing] over 200 miles”; “so sprawling *481that it was most often described as 'ludicrous' or 'absurd'and “too sprawling and uncompact to allow for effective campaigning and representation.” Stip. Ex. 26. Further, the State claimed that in order to create such districts, it would be required to divide several more voting precincts, resulting in a “nightmare” of voter confusion and electoral complications. Stip. Ex. 25 at 31-32. The State's own observations now serve to describe North Carolina's current Chapter 7.
Given the State's efforts to disavow the continued relevance of Gingles and the nearly total absence of support in the legislative record, I disagree with the majority's conclusions that the General Assembly was "without doubt aware" or “necessarily aware” that "conditions in North Carolina were such that the African-American minority could likely prove many of the other factors that are relevant to establishing a § 2 violation,” see ante at 463-464, and that there was a “general perception by the legislature (or at least its leadership) that the African-American minority could make out a prima facie § 2 case with respect to any congressional redistricting plan that did not include two majority-minority districts____” Ante at 464 (emphasis added). One could safely conclude that legislators were “without doubt aware" of the “need” for virtually any act of legislation.

. Indeed, the portions of the legislative record cited in the majority's opinion support the conclusion that the Voting Rights Act was not the primary inspiration for Chapter 7:
I’m not going to try to speak as a lawyer versed in congressional or any other kind of redistricting. Because I haven't even read the Gingles case and I don’t know much about it.
* * * * * *
And I’ll say this, also, that I want the black people of this State of have [sic] two congressmen in the United States Congress. I think they deserve it.
Stip.Ex. 200 at 924 (excerpt of Senate floor debates) (emphasis added). Another Senator echoed this sentiment:
So, I just want to say I support this bill because I think so far as the blacks are concerned that yes, they deserve two black districts. After going through a 1990 race, they can see we still need to make some improvements in how our relationships are between our people. So I say to you, let’s see how this works.
Id. at 932 (emphasis added).

. The majority also notes the political sparring that took place between North Carolina Republicans and Democrats over the location of the majority-minority districts and the specific contours thereof. To the extent that such decisions were motivated by political expediency on either party's part, I would find the State's interest in creating these particular districts that much less compelling. The fight here was about power. The Democratic majority party in the legislature, as the State admits by its answer, sought to protect its incumbents; the evidence also showed that it drew district lines to enhance its members within the State congressional delegation. The Republican Party legislators had like motives. This is simply not the stuff of which solemn rectifications of past racial wrongs are wrought.

. Regarding the Gingles requirement of political cohesion, I cite Justice Thomas' recent observations in Holder v. Hall:
According to the rule adopted in Gingles, plaintiffs must show simply that members of a racial group tend to prefer the same candidates. There is no set standard defining how strong the correlation must be, and an inquiry into the cause for the correlation (to determine, for example, whether it might be the product of similar socioeconomic interests rather than some other factor related to race) is unnecessary.... As a result, Gingles' requirement of proof of political cohesiveness, as practically applied, has proved little different from a working assumption that racial groups can be conceived of largely as political interest groups.
-U.S.-,-, 114 S.Ct. 2581,2597-98, 129 L.Ed.2d 687 (1994) (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment) (citations omitted).

. In Dillard, supra, the District Court stated that "a district is sufficiently geographically compact if it allows for effective representation.” 686 F.Supp. at 1466. Defendants cite this language in support of their contention that District 12 is in fact “geographically compact,” common sense notwithstanding. But even Dillard recognized that "a district would not be sufficiently compact if it was so spread out ... or if it was so convoluted that there was no sense of community....” Id. The term “geographic” at least connotes physical location, and the word "community” implies some sense of physical proximity as well. Indeed, Webster's Dictionary defines "community” as most of us would, namely, "the people living in a particular place or region and usually linked by common interests.” Webster’s 3d New Int'l Dictionary. The Court in Gingles elsewhere summarized its holding as follows: "Stated succinctly, a bloc voting majority must usually be able to defeat candidates supported by a politically cohesive, geographically insular minority group.” Gingles, 478 U.S. at 48-49, 106 S.Ct. at 2765-67 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). It is safe to say that the minority population extracted from virtually all over the State to comprise both District 1 and District 12 has never been characterized as "geographically insular.”

. Indeed, the majority originally cited the recent Supreme Court case of Johnson v. De Grandy, - U.S. -, ---, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 2658-62, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (June 30, 1994), specifically for the proposition that the State here had an obligation to create majority-minority districts "in substantial proportion” to African-Americans' share of the State's voting-age population. See Opinion filed August 1, 1994, at 144 (opinion by Phillips, J., joined by Britt, J.) ("The General Assembly had a 'strong basis in evidence' for concluding that enactment of a race-based congressional redistricting plan was necessary to avoid a violation of § 2 of the Act, because its members were aware from a variety of sources ... that the Chapter 601 plan did not create districts in which African-Americans were a voting majority in substantial proportion to their share of the State's voting age population"). However, I read De Grandy only for the more limited proposition that if a state's existing plan already features majority-minority districts in substantial proportion to a given minority's share of the state’s voting-age population, then the state generally has no further obligation to maximize the possible number of majority-minority districts located within its boundaries. De Grandy, - U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2659-60 (“reading § 2 to define dilution as any failure to maximize tends to obscure the very object of the statute and to run counter to its textually stated purpose.... Failure to maximize cannot be the measure of § 2”). The majority has since reconsidered its position. See ante at 474.

. The majority's contention that majority-minority districts that guarantee only the opportunity for minority electoral success do not violate § 2's rejection of proportional representation, see ante at 447, is wholly unpersuasive. As Justice Thomas notes in his concurrence in Holder, supra, "[i]t should be clear that a system that gives a minority group proportional control [accomplished even by a bare majority] effectively provides the 'right' to elect a proportionate number of minority candidates that the Act disclaims. Whether that right is utilized by minority voters to elect minority candidates is a matter of the voters' choice.” - U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2610 n. 26.

. On December 17, 1991, House Speaker Daniel T. Blue, Jr., Representative Toby Fitch, Senator Dennis Winner, Leslie Winner, and Gerry Cohen travelled to Washington, D.C., to meet with John Dunne, the Assistant Attorney General of the United States for Civil Rights. The meeting had been called by Mr. Dunne in connection with the rejection of North Carolina's original redistricting plan (Chapter 601). Senator Winner recounted the events of the meeting in his deposition, waiving his legislative privilege:
That meeting — I could not figure out the purpose of that meeting once we got into it, because it was very obvious to me — -that was the first time I met John Dunne, or whatever his name is. And it was very obvious to me that Mr. Dunne had already made his mind up, and why he dragged us to Washington I don't know.
They talked about the Senate and the House plan^ — you know, out of an hour or two hour meeting maybe we spent five minutes on the legislative plans. Most of it had to do with the congressional plan. And Mr. Dunne did most of the talking — there was a little talking from the other staff, but he did most of the talking, and most of it got down to sort of that we ought to have a quota system with respect to minority seats. You had 22 percent blacks in this state. Therefore, you ought to have as close to that as you could have of congressional districts. That is really all I remember about it.... I think his substance was really that you had — if you had 22 percent blacks in North Carolina, then you ought to have 22 percent minority congressional seats. Whatever shape didn’t matter.
Deposition of Senator Dennis Winner at 17-19.

. As a three-judge panel in Maryland recently noted, political scientists and voting law scholars have proved that any group of voters — regardless of where they live — can be fit into one contiguous district. Marylanders for Fair Representation, Inc. v. Schaefer, 849 F.Supp. 1022, 1052 n. 38 (1994) (" 'If every name in the Manhattan phone book is randomly associated with one of ten districts, a map can be constructed that will place every voter in a literally contiguous district no matter which combination of names and districts are chosen. The resulting redistricting map would certainly look odd — in places, districts might be stretched thin as telephone wires — but it can be done, regardless of where the voters live’ ”). The panel went on to conclude, rightly so, that “[o]n this view, Justice Brennan's requirement in Gingles that a minority group be compact enough to be placed in a contiguous remedial district would actually be no requirement at all.” Id.

. The Supreme Court has expressly left open the question of whether influence-dilution claims are themselves cognizable under § 2. Growe v. Emison, - U.S. -, - n. 5, 113 S.Ct. 1075, 1084 n. 5, 122 L.Ed.2d 388 (1993); see also Gingles, 478 U.S. at 46-47 n. 12, 106 S.Ct. at 2764 n. 12; Voinovich v. Quilter, - U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 1149, 1155, 122 L.Ed.2d 500 (1993).

. In fact, North Carolina’s original plan (Chapter 601) was explicitly rejected by the Attorney General for failure to demonstrate as much. See ante at 461-462, (quoting Stip. 72, Stip. Ex. 27).

. The majority observes in a footnote that coverage under § 5 "is tantamount to a congressional finding that the jurisdiction in question has committed identified violations of the Fifteenth Amendment in the relatively recent past," see ante at 442 n. 33, and that such a finding may be regarded as "sufficient, in and of itself, to give that jurisdiction a 'strong basis in evidence’ for thinking that it must engage in race-based redistricting. ...” Id. Given the restrictive nature of the Voting Rights Act’s bailout provisions, however, such a rule, taken to its logical conclusion, could conceivably require a jurisdiction to employ increasingly extreme race-based remedial devices over a prolonged period of time without any real justification. This could not have been Congress’ intent when it enacted the Voting Rights Act. Moreover, evidence was adduced at trial that some members of the legislature believed that Justice Department officials were acting with partisan motives in requiring the State to create two majority-minority districts. This climate of opinion tends to contradict any contention that the legislature sincerely believed that "it must engage in race-based redistricting" in order to remedy voting rights violations.

. I agree with the majority here that a state is not required to "challenge a Justice Department denial of preclearance in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and lose, before it may safely conclude that it has a compelling interest in adopting a new plan to address the concerns upon which the Department's denial of preclearance was based." See ante at 442. But to require a state to assert some independent basis for its apprehension of liability would neither manifest "disrespect for the judgment of the Attorney General” nor interfere with states’ efforts "to comply voluntarily with their obligations under the federal civil rights laws.” Id. at 442 (citations omitted). Indeed, such a requirement would only bolster a state’s willingness to take remedial action, if warranted.
Here, of course, the State chose not to enact the particular district plan proposed by the Department of Justice, which included a majority-minority district in the south-central to southeastern part of the state. While the State obviously was not required to adopt the Department of Justice's proposal, its failure to do so or even to address the Department of Justice’s concerns certainly casts some doubts on the merits of the Attorney General’s objections and the compelling nature of the State's interest in complying therewith.

.The majority notes that Congress expressly authorized the Department of Justice to act as a “surrogate” for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in approving redistricting legislation. See ante at 442. Such approval of course does not render redistricting legislation immune from subsequent judicial scrutiny, including invalidation. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act itself specifies that neither a declaratory judgment in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia nor a ruling by the Attorney General shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of a proposed change in voting procedure. See 42 U.S.C. § 1973c.

. Otherwise, the case before us presents the perfect example of how, in Abigail Themstrom’s view, § 5 has been improperly transformed from its original objective of "guarding against renewed disfranchisement, the use of the back door once the front was blocked,” to an instrument to "promote the election of blacks to public office.” See Abigail Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights 20, 38 (1987).

. Of the remaining 60 counties which are not covered by § 5, eight of those are included in part in District 12. In addition, eight of North Carolina's § 5 covered counties are entirely in-eluded within the First District, along with portions of 14 other counties. Six of the remaining uncovered counties are included, in whole or in part, in the First District. Sixteen of North Carolina's 40 covered counties are not included, in whole or in part, in either of Chapter 7’s majority-minority districts. Id.

.The majority's finding in this regard is of interest, however, in light of its prior conclusion that the General Assembly found sufficient reason to remedy a suspected § 2 violation, since contemporaneous evidence of legislative findings as to either justification is unquestionably scarce.

. In assessing proposed gerrymandered districts far less egregious than those presently before us, a three-judge panel in Arkansas likewise found that bizarre district shape could very well betray the absence of any compact minority population sufficient to warrant § 2 liability under *491Gingles. Writing for the Court, Judge Arnold held that:
The peculiar shape of [plaintiff's proposed districts] ... is precisely due to the lack of the compact minority population required by Gingles____ The bottom line is that the black population in this area is simply too widely dispersed for us to hold that the Board [of Apportionment] has violated § 2 by refusing to draw the additional ... districts which the plaintiffs have requested.
Jeffers, 847 F.Supp. at 662.

. The majority here makes much of the fact that, given the bare majority of blacks in North Carolina’s two majority-minority districts, these districts in no way “guarantee" the election of an African-American to Congress in the same way that traditional quotas "guarantee” the hiring or promotion of certain minorities. See ante at 446-447. Whether or not the election of blacks in these districts is certain, however, it is undisputed that these districts were intended by the General Assembly to achieve a certain result— guaranteeing blacks an opportunity to elect a representative of their own choice. This guaranty, of course, depends for its success on the legislative assumption that black voters will tend to vote in a bloc for black candidates. So while proportional representation may not always be the actual outcome of every election given the bare minority majorities in the districts at issue, it was nevertheless the intended outcome here, as the evidence strongly suggests.
In any event, the majority's argument that the Voting Rights Act requires even such "opportunity” districts arguably violates § 2’s repudiation *492of proportional representation where North Carolina's redistricting plan effectively provides the "right” to elect a proportionate number of minority candidates, even if such right is not actually exercised by minority voters. See Holder, 484 U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2610 n. 26 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment); see also supra at - n. 15.

. That characterization also betrays the majority's belief that a legislature may, at its leisure, subordinate the constitutionally protected third-party interests identified in Shaw in favor of such a relatively transitory interest as incumbency protection, one of the admittedly primary goals of Chapter 7. See generally testimony of Gerry Cohen, Tr. pp. 281-652.

. Indeed, if consideration were reserved solely for constitutionally-mandated redistricting principles, there would be no need to engage in a strict scrutiny analysis in the first place. If a voting district violated the "one person, one vote” standard or unduly diluted minority voting strength, such a district would be defective in its own right, inherently unconstitutional regardless of any compelling justification.

. The majority observes that “[n]either the UJO plurality nor the Shaw majority indicates that compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions are the only districting principles which can be considered 'sound'....” See ante at 450 n. 44 (emphasis in original) (citing United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 167-68, 97 S.Ct. at 1010-11 (opinion by White, J.) ("we think it ... permissible for a State, employing sound districting principles such as compactness and population equality, to attempt to prevent racial minorities from being repeatedly outvoted by creating districts that will afford fair representation to the members of those racial groups who are sufficiently numerous and whose residential patterns afford the opportunity of creating districts in which they will be in the majority." (emphasis added))). But I fail to see how this authorizes a state to completely disregard traditional redistricting principles such as compactness and contiguity without consequence. I would therefore vigorously disagree with the majority’s conclusion that "[i]n according primacy to these redistricting principles [including distinctive and internally homogenous communities of interest], the legislature necessarily had to subordinate geographical compactness and respect for the integrity of political subdivisions____" See ante at 473 (emphasis added). The legislature was not required to subordinate geographical compactness, and it should therefore be held accountable for its choice to do so.

. See also supra at 485 n. 17.

. Of course, it is true that these values in isolation can be sacrificed by a legislature today with little fear of judicial intervention. But under Shaw, racial harmony is one value that may not be compromised free of strict (not scant) judicial scrutiny.

. The majority in my opinion drastically underestimates the degree of voter confusion that can result from gerrymandered voting districts and the significance of such confusion to the political process, while overlooking the significance of citizens' perceptions of fair and effective representation as well. A citizenry's perceptions of its political process can be as critical in a democracy as the process itself, and factors that can adversely affect such perceptions should not be dismissed. Thus, the majority's conclusion that certain facts outside the normal, "earth-bound, horizontal workaday world” of the citizen-voter, such as the irregularity of the district in which he or she resides, are not a matter of any great practical consequence, see ante at 472 n. 60, seriously underestimates the intellectual grasp of those voters. These people serve on juries in intricate cases, and they know when race is energizing the affairs of state.

. Regarding the political nature of the court's role in vote dilution cases generally, I find Justice Thomas' concurrence in Holder, supra, to have considerable merit. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, notes that:
by construing the [Voting Rights Act] to cover potentially dilutive electoral mechanisms, we have immersed the federal courts in a hopeless project of weighing questions of political theory.... [F]or it is only a resort to political theory that can enable a court to determine which electoral systems provide the "fairest" levels of representation or the most “effective” or "undiluted” votes to minorities.
- U.S. at --, 114 S.Ct. at 2591-92. Accordingly, "[t]he matters the Court has set out to resolve in vote dilution cases are questions of political philosophy, not questions of law. As such, they are not readily subjected to any judicially manageable standards that can guide courts in attempting to select between competing theories.” Id. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2596 (footnote omitted). Determining issues of district compactness and shape no more involves courts in standardless policy-making than does each and eveiy judicial endeavor under the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, the majority opinion's pejorative assessment of the inherent value of geographically-based voting districts generally, see ante at 451-452, demonstrates the political nature of our endeavor here.