Cite as: 507 U. S. 25 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
782 F. Supp., at 440. We must review this analysis because, if it is correct, the District Court was right to deny effect to the state-court legislative redistricting plan.
As an initial matter, it is not clear precisely which legislative districting plan produced the vote dilution that necessitated the super-majority remedy. For almost a decade prior to the 1992 election season, the only legislative districting plan that had been in use in Minnesota was the 1983 plan, which all parties agreed was unconstitutional in light of the 1990 census. More importantly, the state court had declared the 1983 plan to be unconstitutional in its final order of January 30. Once that order issued, the Emison plaintiffs' claims that the 1983 plan violated the Voting Rights Act became moot, unless those claims also related to the superseding plan. But no party to this litigation has ever alleged that either Chapter 246, or the modified version of Chapter 246 adopted by the state court, resulted in vote dilution. The District Court did not hold a hearing or request written argument from the parties on the § 2 validity of any particular plan; nor does the District Court's discussion focus on any particular plan.
Although the legislative plan that in the court's view produced the § 2 "dilution" violation is unclear, the District Court did clearly conclude that the state court's plan could not remedy that unspecified violation because it "fail[ed] to provide the affirmative relief necessary to adequately protect minority voting rights." Id., at 448. The District Court was of the view, in other words, as the dissenting judge perceived, see id., at 452, and n. 6 (MacLaughlin, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), that any legislative plan lacking a super-majority minority Senate district in Minneapolis violated § 2. We turn to the merits of this position.
Our precedent requires that, to establish a vote-dilution claim with respect to a multimember districting plan (and
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