Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
a racial gerrymander, but there was other evidence that showed that the legislature was motivated by a "predominant, overriding desire" to create a third majority-black district. That evidence was the State's own concession that the legislature had intentionally created an additional majority-black district. See id., at 918-919. On that record, we found that the District Court could not have "reached any conclusion other than that race was the predominant factor in drawing Georgia's Eleventh District." Id., at 918.
We have said that impermissible racial classifications do not follow inevitably from a legislature's mere awareness of racial demographics. See id., at 916; Shaw I, supra, at 646. But the intentional creation of a majority-minority district certainly means more than mere awareness that application of traditional, race-neutral districting principles will result in the creation of a district in which a majority of the district's residents are members of a particular minority group. See Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 279 (1979) (distinguishing discriminatory intent from "intent as volition" or "intent as awareness of consequences"). In my view, it means that the legislature affirmatively undertakes to create a majority-minority district that would not have existed but for the express use of racial classifications—in other words, that a majority-minority district is created "because of," and not merely "in spite of," racial demographics. See ibid. When that occurs, traditional race-neutral districting principles are necessarily subordinated (and race necessarily predominates), and the legislature has classified persons on the basis of race. The resulting redistricting must be viewed as a racial gerrymander.
Our summary affirmance of DeWitt v. Wilson, 856 F. Supp. 1409 (ED Cal. 1994), summarily aff'd in part and dism'd in part, 515 U. S. 1170 (1995), cannot justify exempting intentional race-based redistricting from our well-established Fourteenth Amendment standard. "When we summarily
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