680
Souter, J., dissenting
Court's determination to depart from our prior decisions by carving out this narrow group of cases for strict scrutiny in place of the review customarily applied in cases dealing with discrimination in electoral districting on the basis of race.
I
Until today, the Court has analyzed equal protection claims involving race in electoral districting differently from equal protection claims involving other forms of governmental conduct, and before turning to the different regimes of analysis it will be useful to set out the relevant respects in which such districting differs from the characteristic circumstances in which a State might otherwise consciously consider race. Unlike other contexts in which we have addressed the State's conscious use of race, see, e. g., Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469 (1989) (city contracting); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267 (1986) (teacher layoffs), electoral districting calls for decisions that nearly always require some consideration of race for legitimate reasons where there is a racially mixed population. As long as members of racial groups have the commonality of interest implicit in our ability to talk about concepts like "minority voting strength," and "dilution of minority votes," cf. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 46-51 (1986), and as long as racial bloc voting takes place,1 legislators will have to take race into account in order to avoid dilution of minority voting strength in the districting plans they adopt.2 One need look
1 "Bloc racial voting is an unfortunate phenomenon, but we are repeatedly faced with the findings of knowledgeable district courts that it is a fact of life. Where it exists, most often the result is that neither white nor black can be elected from a district in which his race is in the minority." Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 144 (1976) (White, J., dissenting).
2 Recognition of actual commonality of interest and racially polarized bloc voting cannot be equated with the " 'invocation of race stereotypes' " described by the Court, ante, at 648 (quoting Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 630-631 (1991)), and forbidden by our case law.
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