Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
may be acceptable when adopted by a state legislature. Because these districts satisfy the State's compelling interest and do so in a manner that uses racial considerations only in a way reasonably designed to ensure such a satisfaction, I conclude that the districts are narrowly tailored.
VI
I cannot profess to know how the Court's developing jurisprudence of racial gerrymandering will alter the political and racial landscape in this Nation—although it certainly will alter that landscape. As the Court's law in this area has developed, it has become ever more apparent to me that the Court's approach to these cases creates certain perverse incentives and (I presume) unanticipated effects that serve to highlight the essentially unknown territory into which it strides. Because I believe that the social and political risks created by the Court's decisions are not required by the Constitution, my first choice would be to avoid the preceding analysis altogether, and leave these considerations to the political branches of our Government.
The first unintended outcome of the legal reasoning in Shaw II and this case is the very result that those decisions seek to avoid: the predominance of race in the districting process, over all other principles of importance. Given the Court's unwillingness to recognize the role that race-neutral districting principles played in the creation of the bizarrely shaped districts in both this case and Shaw II, it now seems clear that the only way that a State can both create a majority-minority district and avoid a racial gerrymander is by drawing, "without much conscious thought," ante, at 967 (opinion of O'Connor, J.), and within the "limited degree of leeway" granted by the Court, ante, at 977, the precise compact district that a court would impose in a successful § 2 challenge. See post, at 1066-1067 (Souter, J., dissenting). After the Court's decisions today, therefore, minority voters can make up a majority only in compact districts, whether
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