1030
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
suffer them in equal degree." Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991); see also Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 560 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
These principles apply to the drawing of electoral and political boundaries. As Justice Douglas, joined by Justice Goldberg, stated 30 years ago:
"When racial or religious lines are drawn by the State, the multiracial, multireligious communities that our Constitution seeks to weld together as one become separatist; antagonisms that relate to race or to religion rather than to political issues are generated . . . . Since that system is at war with the democratic ideal, it should find no footing here." Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U. S. 52, 67 (1964) (dissenting opinion).
In like fashion, Chief Justice Burger observed that the "use of a mathematical formula" to assure a minimum number of majority-minority districts "tends to sustain the existence of ghettos by promoting the notion that political clout is to be gained or maintained by marshaling particular racial, ethnic, or religious groups in enclaves." United Jewish Organizations v. Carey, 430 U. S., at 186 (dissenting opinion). And last Term in Shaw, we voiced our agreement with these sentiments, observing that "[r]acial 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." 509 U. S., at 657.
Our decision in Shaw alluded to, but did not resolve,
the broad question whether "the intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more, always gives rise to an equal protection claim." Id., at 649 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id., at 657. While recognizing that redistricting differs from many other kinds of state decision-
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