Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
I can no longer adhere to a reading of the Act that does not comport with the terms of the statute and that has produced such a disastrous misadventure in judicial policy-making. I would hold that the size of a government body is not a "standard, practice, or procedure" because, properly understood, those terms reach only state enactments that limit citizens' access to the ballot.
I
If one surveys the history of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1973 et seq., one can only be struck by the sea change that has occurred in the application and enforcement of the Act since it was passed in 1965. The statute was originally perceived as a remedial provision directed specifically at eradicating discriminatory practices that restricted blacks' ability to register and vote in the segregated South. Now, the Act has grown into something entirely different. In construing the Act to cover claims of vote dilution, we have converted the Act into a device for regulating, rationing, and apportioning political power among racial and ethnic groups. In the process, we have read the Act essentially as a grant of authority to the federal judiciary to develop theories on basic principles of representative government, for it is only a resort to political theory that can enable a court to determine which electoral systems provide the "fairest" levels of representation or the most "effective" or "undiluted" votes to minorities.
Before I turn to an analysis of the text of § 2 to explain why, in my view, the terms of the statute do not authorize the project that we have undertaken in the name of the Act, I intend first simply to describe the development of the basic contours of vote dilution actions under the Voting Rights Act.1 An examination of the current state of our decisions
1 Of course, many of the basic principles I will discuss are equally applicable to constitutional vote dilution cases. Indeed, prior to the amendment of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, dilution claims typically were
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