Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
I do not mean to suggest that States have unbridled power to handicap particular classes of candidates, even when those candidates enjoy federally conferred advantages that may threaten to skew the electoral process. But laws that allegedly have the purpose and effect of handicapping a particular class of candidates traditionally are reviewed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments rather than the Qualifications Clauses. Compare Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S., at 728-736 (undertaking a lengthy First and Fourteenth Amendment analysis of a California rule that denied ballot access to any independent candidate for Congress who had not severed his ties to a political party at least one year prior to the immediately preceding primary election, or 17 months before the general election), with id., at 746, n. 16 (dismissing as "wholly without merit" the notion that this rule might violate the Qualifications Clauses). Term-limit measures have tended to survive such review without difficulty. See, e. g., Moore v. McCartney, 425 U. S. 946 (1976) (dismissing an appeal from State ex rel. Maloney v. McCartney, 159 W. Va. 513, 223 S. E. 2d 607, on the ground that limits on the terms of state officeholders do not even raise a substantial federal question under the First and Fourteenth Amendments).
To analyze such laws under the Qualifications Clauses may open up whole new vistas for courts. If it is true that "the current congressional campaign finance system . . . has created an electoral system so stacked against challengers that in many elections voters have no real choices," Wertheimer & Manes, 94 Colum. L. Rev., at 1133, are the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974 unconstitutional under (of all things) the Qualifications Clauses? Cf. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (upholding the current system against First Amendment challenge). If it can be shown that nonminorities are at a significant disadvantage when they seek election in districts dominated by minority voters, would the intentional creation of "majority-minority
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