Cite as: 509 U. S. 630 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
on the race of those burdened or benefited by a particular classification." Croson, 488 U. S., at 494 (plurality opinion); see also id., at 520 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). Accord, Wygant, 476 U. S., at 273 (plurality opinion). Indeed, racial classifications receive close scrutiny even when they may be said to burden or benefit the races equally. See Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991) ("It is axiomatic that racial classifications do not become legitimate on the assumption that all persons suffer them in equal degree").
Finally, nothing in the Court's highly fractured decision in UJO—on which the District Court almost exclusively relied, and which the dissenters evidently believe controls, see post, at 664-667 (opinion of White, J.); post, at 684, and n. 6 (opinion of Souter, J.)—forecloses the claim we recognize today. UJO concerned New York's revision of a reapportionment plan to include additional majority-minority districts in response to the Attorney General's denial of administrative preclearance under § 5. In that regard, it closely resembles the present case. But the cases are critically different in another way. The plaintiffs in UJO—members of a Hasidic community split between two districts under New York's revised redistricting plan—did not allege that the plan, on its face, was so highly irregular that it rationally could be understood only as an effort to segregate voters by race. Indeed, the facts of the case would not have supported such a claim. Three Justices approved the New York statute, in part, precisely because it adhered to traditional districting principles:
"[W]e 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."
651
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