Cite as: 515 U. S. 900 (1995)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
Nation's cities are full of districts identified by their ethnic character—Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, for example. See, e. g., S. Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985, p. 91 (1988) (describing Jersey City's "Horseshoe district" as "lumping most of the city's Irish together"); Coveted Landmarks Add a Twist to Redistricting Task, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10, 1991, pp. A1, A24 ("In San Francisco in 1961, . . . an Irish Catholic [State Assembly member] 'wanted his district drawn following [Catholic] parish lines so all the parishes where he went to baptisms, weddings and funerals would be in his district' . . . ."); Stone, Goode: Bad and Indifferent, Washington Monthly, July-Aug. 1986, pp. 27, 28 (discussing "The Law of Ethnic Loyalty— . . . a universal law of politics," and identifying "predominantly Italian wards of South Philadelphia," a "Jewish Los Angeles district," and a "Polish district in Chicago"). The creation of ethnic districts reflecting felt identity is not ordinarily viewed as offensive or demeaning to those included in the delineation.
III
To separate permissible and impermissible use of race in legislative apportionment, the Court orders strict scrutiny for districting plans "predominantly motivated" by race. No longer can a State avoid judicial oversight by giving—as in this case—genuine and measurable consideration to traditional districting practices. Instead, a federal case can be mounted whenever plaintiffs plausibly allege that other factors carried less weight than race. This invitation to litigate against the State seems to me neither necessary nor proper.
A
The Court derives its test from diverse opinions on the relevance of race in contexts distinctly unlike apportionment.
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