40
Opinion of the Court
hence to justify a super-majority districting remedy), a plaintiff must prove three threshold conditions: first, "that [the minority group] is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district"; second, "that it is politically cohesive"; and third, "that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50-51. We have not previously considered whether these Gingles threshold factors apply to a § 2 dilution challenge to a single-member districting scheme, a so-called "vote fragmentation" claim. See id., at 46-47, n. 12. We have, however, stated on many occasions that multimember districting plans, as well as at-large plans, generally pose greater threats to minority-voter participation in the political process than do single-member districts, see, e. g., id., at 47, and n. 13; id., at 87 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); Rogers v. Lodge, 458 U. S. 613, 616-617 (1982); see also Burns v. Richardson, 384 U. S. 73, 88 (1966)—which is why we have strongly preferred single-member districts for federal-court-ordered reapportionment, see, e. g., Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 415 (1977). It would be peculiar to conclude that a vote-dilution challenge to the (more dangerous) multimember district requires a higher threshold showing than a vote-fragmentation challenge to a single-member district. Certainly the reasons for the three Gingles prerequisites continue to apply: The "geographically compact majority" and "minority political cohesion" showings are needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district, see Gingles, supra, at 50, n. 17. And the "minority political cohesion" and "majority bloc voting" showings are needed to establish that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote by submerging it in a larger white voting population, see Gingles, supra, at 51. Unless these
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007