Cite as: 509 U. S. 630 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
wide, the majority concluded that appellants had failed to state an equal protection claim. Id., at 472-473.
Chief Judge Voorhees agreed that race-conscious redistricting is not per se unconstitutional but dissented from the rest of the majority's equal protection analysis. He read Justice White's opinion in UJO to authorize race-based re-apportionment only when the State employs traditional districting principles such as compactness and contiguity. 808 F. Supp., at 475-477 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). North Carolina's failure to respect these principles, in Judge Voorhees' view, "augur[ed] a constitutionally suspect, and potentially unlawful, intent" sufficient to defeat the state appellees' motion to dismiss. Id., at 477.
We noted probable jurisdiction. 506 U. S. 1019 (1992).
II
A
"The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic society . . . ." Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S., at 555. For much of our Nation's history, that right sadly has been denied to many because of race. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870 after a bloody Civil War, promised unequivocally that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote" no longer would be "denied or abridged . . . by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, § 1.
But "[a] number of states . . . refused to take no for an answer and continued to circumvent the fifteenth amendment's prohibition through the use of both subtle and blunt instruments, perpetuating ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination." Blumstein, Defining and Proving Race Discrimination: Perspectives on the Purpose Vs. Results Approach from the Voting Rights Act, 69 Va. L. Rev. 633, 637 (1983). Ostensibly race-neutral devices such as literacy tests with "grandfather" clauses and "good character" provisos were devised to deprive black voters of the franchise.
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