932
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
jected the argument advanced by the United States as amicus curiae that § 2(b)'s test based on an equal "opportunity . . . to participate in the political process and to elect representatives" suggested a focus on nothing more than securing equal access to the political process, not a focus on measuring the influence of a minority group's votes in terms of electoral outcomes. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Thornburg v. Gingles, O. T. 1985, No. 83-1968, pp. 7-19. That understanding of § 2 is, of course, compatible with the interpretation I have set out above.
In approaching § 2, the Gingles Court, based on little more than a bald assertion that "the authoritative source for legislative intent lies in the Committee Reports on the bill," 478 U. S., at 43, n. 7, bypassed a consideration of the text of the Act and proceeded to interpret the section based almost exclusively on its legislative history.28 It was from the legislative history that the Court culled its understanding that § 2
28 In offering two citations to support the sweeping proposition that committee reports provide the authoritative source for legislative intent, Gingles plainly misread the import of our prior decisions. Far from giving an unqualified endorsement of committee reports as a guide to congressional intent, the Court in Garcia v. United States, 469 U. S. 70 (1984), merely indicated that, when resort to legislative history is necessary, it is only committee reports, not the various other sources of legislative history, that should be considered. See id., at 76. The Court, however, carefully repeated Justice Jackson's admonition that "[r]esort to legislative history is only justified where the face of the [statute] is inescapably ambiguous." Id., at 76, n. 3 (quoting Schwegmann Brothers v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384, 395 (1951) (concurring opinion)). Similarly, in Zuber v. Allen, 396 U. S. 168 (1969), we considered the reliability of committee reports only as a relative matter in comparing them to statements made by individual Congressmen during floor debates. See id., at 186.
Even if I agreed with Justice Jackson that resort to legislative history is permissible when the text of a statute is "inescapably ambiguous," I could not agree with the use the Court has made of legislative history in interpreting § 2. I think it is clear, first, that in interpreting § 2 the Court has never undertaken any inquiry into the meaning of the plain language of the statute to determine whether it is ambiguous, and second, that the text of § 2 is not riddled with such hopeless ambiguity.
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