Holder v. Hall, 512 U.S. 874, 66 (1994)

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Cite as: 512 U. S. 874 (1994)

Thomas, J., concurring in judgment

tors," singly or in any combination, cannot provide a principle for determining the result. What one must know to decide the case is whether 20% of the seats in the government is sufficient to reflect "undiluted" voting strength, or if 30% should be required.

Of course, as suggested above, the White factors may be relevant to determining as a threshold matter whether the minority group is a distinct political group that should be able to assert a claim of dilution. But after Gingles, the inquiry into whether race defines political interest effectively has been boiled down to the weakened test for minority "political cohesiveness" and majority bloc voting embodied in the second and third Gingles preconditions. See 478 U. S., at 51. Once a plaintiff group establishes that it is mathematically possible for it to control another seat (that is, that it satisfies the first Gingles precondition of size and geographic compactness), see id., at 50, and that it is a distinct political group (that is, that it can show political cohesion and majority bloc voting), the only question remaining in the vote dilution claim is whether the current number of seats is the proper number or not. The other White factors have become essentially superfluous. They may be dutifully intoned by courts performing the empty ritual of applying the "totality of circumstances" test, but they can provide no guidance concerning whether the current allocation of seats constitutes "dilution." Cf. Gingles, supra, at 92-93 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (suggesting that the basic contours of a dilution claim require no reference to most of the White factors).

In short, it should be clear that the factors listed in Gingles—in their various incarnations and by whatever names they are known—are nothing but puffery used to fill out an impressive verbal formulation and to create the impression that the outcome in a vote dilution case rests upon a reasoned evaluation of a variety of relevant circumstances. The "totality of circumstances" test outlined in Gingles thus

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