686
Souter, J., dissenting
tion. The shape of the district at issue in this case is indeed so bizarre that few other examples are ever likely to carry the unequivocal implication of impermissible use of race that the Court finds here. It may therefore be that few electoral districting cases are ever likely to employ the strict scrutiny the Court holds to be applicable on remand if appellants' allegations are "not contradicted." Ante, at 653; see also ante, at 658.8
Nonetheless, in those cases where this cause of action is sufficiently pleaded, the State will have to justify its decision to consider race as being required by a compelling state interest, and its use of race as narrowly tailored to that interest. Meanwhile, in other districting cases, specific consequential harm will still need to be pleaded and proven, in the absence of which the use of race may be invalidated only if it is shown to serve no legitimate state purpose. Cf. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 500 (1954).
The Court offers no adequate justification for treating the
narrow category of bizarrely shaped district claims differently from other districting claims.9 The only justification I
8 While the Court "express[es] no view as to whether 'the intentional creation of majority-minority districts, without more,' always gives rise to an equal protection claim," ante, at 649 (quoting ante, at 668 (White, J., dissenting)), it repeatedly emphasizes that there is some reason to believe that a configuration devised with reference to traditional districting principles would present a case falling outside the cause of action recognized today. See ante, at 642, 649, 652, 657-658.
9 The Court says its new cause of action is justified by what I understand to be some ingredients of stigmatic harm, see ante, at 647-648, and by a "threa[t] to . . . our system of representative democracy," ante, at 650, both caused by the mere adoption of a districting plan with the elements I have described in the text, supra, at 685. To begin with, the complaint nowhere alleges any type of stigmatic harm. See App. to Juris. Statement 67a-100a (Complaint and Motion for Preliminary Injunction and For Temporary Restraining Order). Putting that to one side, it seems utterly implausible to me to presume, as the Court does, that North Carolina's creation of this strangely shaped majority-minority district "generates" within the white plaintiffs here anything comparable to "a feeling of inferi-
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