1006
Opinion of the Court
judgment in a United States district court, based on the losing party's claim that the state judgment itself violates the loser's federal rights. See District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462, 482 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413, 416 (1923). But the invocation of Rooker/Feldman is just as inapt here, for unlike Rooker or Feldman, the United States was not a party in the state court. It was in no position to ask this Court to review the state court's judgment and has not directly attacked it in this proceeding. Cf. Feldman, supra, at 468, and n. 2, 472, and n. 8 (suing District of Columbia Court of Appeals); Rooker, supra, at 414 (seeking to have state court's judgment declared null and void). The United States merely seeks to litigate its § 2 case for the first time, and the Government's claims, like those of the private plaintiffs, are properly before the federal courts.
III
On the merits of the vote dilution claims covering the House districts, the crux of the State's argument is the power of Hispanics under SJR 2-G to elect candidates of their choice in a number of districts that mirrors their share of the Dade County area's voting-age population (i. e., 9 out of 20 House districts); this power, according to the State, bars any finding that the plan dilutes Hispanic voting strength. The District Court is said to have missed that conclusion by mistaking our precedents to require the plan to maximize the number of Hispanic-controlled districts.
The State's argument takes us back to ground covered last Term in two cases challenging single-member districts. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146 (1993); Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S. 25 (1993). In Growe, we held that a claim of vote dilution in a single-member district requires proof meeting the same three threshold conditions for a dilution challenge to a multimember district: that a minority group be " 'sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a ma-
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