Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
created three majority-minority districts.7 The plurality's statement that strict scrutiny "does [not] apply to all cases of intentional creation of majority-minority districts," ante, at 958, merely caps a long line of discussions, stretching from Shaw I to Shaw II, which have both expressly and implicitly set forth precisely that conclusion.8
7 I do not agree with the Court's approach to these cases. Nonetheless, given that the Court seems settled in its conclusion that racial gerrymandering claims such as these may be pursued, I endorse this proposition.
8 Though expressly reserving the issue in Shaw I, we noted there that appellants wisely conceded that while "race-conscious redistricting is not always unconstitutional. . . . This Court has never held that race-conscious state decisionmaking is impermissible in all circumstances." 509 U. S., at 642 (emphasis in original). The threshold test for the application of strict scrutiny as set forth in Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900 (1995), implicitly accepts this as true, concluding that strict scrutiny applies not when race merely influences the districting process, but only when "the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles . . . to racial considerations." Id., at 916 (emphasis added); see also id., at 928-929 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (test does not "throw into doubt the vast majority of the Nation's 435 congressional districts . . . even though race may well have been considered in the redistricting process"). Shaw II similarly recognizes that intent does not trigger strict scrutiny: Although the District Court concluded that the State "deliberately drew" the district in question to ensure that it included a majority of African-American citizens, see Shaw, 861 F. Supp., at 473; Shaw II, ante, at 905, the Court reviews the District Court's findings regarding the demographics of the district to determine whether the strict scrutiny was appropriately applied. See ante, at 905-906; cf. ante, at 999 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (where State intends to create majority-minority district, application of strict scrutiny not even a "close question").
Justice Thomas takes a strong view on this matter, arguing that a majority-minority district should escape strict scrutiny only when it is created "in spite of," not "because of," the race of its population. Ante, at 1001. But because minorities are, by definition, minorities in the population, it will be rare indeed for a State to stumble across a district in which the minority population is both large enough and segregated enough to allow majority-minority districts to be created with at most a "mere awareness" that the placement of the lines will create such a district. See ibid. Indeed, I doubt that any such district exists in the entire Nation; the creation of even the most compact majority-minority district will gen-
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