Cite as: 509 U. S. 630 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
we do not read Beer or any of our other § 5 cases to give covered jurisdictions carte blanche to engage in racial gerry-mandering in the name of nonretrogression. A reapportionment plan would not be narrowly tailored to the goal of avoiding retrogression if the State went beyond what was reasonably necessary to avoid retrogression. Our conclusion is supported by the plurality opinion in UJO, in which four Justices determined that New York's creation of additional majority-minority districts was constitutional because the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that the State "did more than the Attorney General was authorized to require it to do under the nonretrogression principle of Beer." 430 U. S., at 162-163 (opinion of White, J., joined by Brennan, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ.) (emphasis added).
Before us, the state appellees contend that the General Assembly's revised plan was necessary not to prevent retrogression, but to avoid dilution of black voting strength in violation of § 2, as construed in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). In Gingles the Court considered a multi-member redistricting plan for the North Carolina State Legislature. The Court held that members of a racial minority group claiming § 2 vote dilution through the use of multi-member districts must prove three threshold conditions: that the minority group "is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district," that the minority group is "politically cohesive," and that "the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." Id., at 50-51. We have indicated that similar preconditions apply in § 2 challenges to single-member districts. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S., at 157-158; Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S., at 40.
Appellants maintain that the General Assembly's revised plan could not have been required by § 2. They contend that the State's black population is too dispersed to support two geographically compact majority-black districts, as the bi-
655
Page: Index Previous 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007