Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
enactment which altered the election law of a covered State in even a minor way." Allen, 393 U. S., at 566. Not surprisingly, the legislative history relied upon in Allen also displayed the typical flaws that one might expect—it was hardly unequivocal. See id., at 590-591, and n. 9 (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting inconsistencies in the legislative history). Thus, to the extent that Allen implicitly has served as the basis for our subsequent interpretation of the terms of § 2, it hardly can be thought to provide any surer rooting in the language of the Act than the method of statutory construction pursued in Gingles.
Remarkably, thanks to our reliance on legislative history, we have interpreted § 2 in such a way that four Members of this Court at one time candidly admitted that "[t]here is an inherent tension [in § 2] between what Congress wished to do and what it wished to avoid." Gingles, 478 U. S., at 84 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment). But our understanding of what Congress purportedly "wished to do"—that is, to allow claims of vote "dilution"—depends solely on a selective reading of legislative history, whereas Congress' statement of what it "wished to avoid" appears explicitly in § 2(b)'s disclaimer of a right to proportional representation. I can see no logical reason to import the "inherent tension" between these two imperatives into the Act, when on its face the statute incorporates only one of two potentially contradictory commands. I would have thought the key to resolving any such conflict between the text and the legislative history obvious: The text of the statute must control, and the text of § 2 does not extend the Act to claims of dilution.
Were it our function to interpret and apply committee reports or other pieces of legislative history, rather than Acts of Congress, I might conclude that we had made the best of a bad situation in interpreting § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and that the quagmire that is § 2 was Congress' creation, not our own. It is apparent, however, that we have arrived at our current understanding of the Act, with all of its attend-
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