Cite as: 515 U. S. 900 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
lieve it to be. Our circumspect approach and narrow holding in Shaw did not erect an artificial rule barring accepted equal protection analysis in other redistricting cases. Shape is relevant not because bizarreness is a necessary element of the constitutional wrong or a threshold requirement of proof, but because it may be persuasive circumstantial evidence that race for its own sake, and not other districting principles, was the legislature's dominant and controlling rationale in drawing its district lines. The logical implication, as courts applying Shaw have recognized, is that parties may rely on evidence other than bizarreness to establish race-based districting. See Shaw v. Hunt, 861 F. Supp. 408, 431 (EDNC 1994); Hays v. Louisiana, 839 F. Supp. 1188, 1195 (WD La. 1993), vacated, 512 U. S. 1230 (1994); but see DeWitt v. Wilson, 856 F. Supp. 1409, 1413 (ED Cal. 1994). Our reasoning in Shaw compels this conclusion. We
recognized in Shaw that, outside the districting context, statutes are subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause not just when they contain express racial classifications, but also when, though race neutral on their face, they are motivated by a racial purpose or object. 509 U. S., at 644. In the rare case, where the effect of government action is a pattern " 'unexplainable on grounds other than race,' " ibid. (quoting Arlington Heights, 429 U. S., at 266), "[t]he evidentiary inquiry is . . . relatively easy," Arlington Heights, supra, at 266 (footnote omitted). As early as Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886), the Court recognized that a laundry permit ordinance was administered in a deliberate way to exclude all Chinese from the laundry business; and in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960), the Court concluded that the redrawing of Tuskegee, Alabama's municipal boundaries left no doubt that the plan was designed to exclude blacks. Even in those cases, however, it was the presumed racial purpose of state action, not its stark manifestation, that was the constitutional violation. Patterns of discrimination as conspicuous as these are rare, and
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