1060
Souter, J., dissenting
cific shape of even one district is to impose a model of legalistic decisionmaking on the one political process that least resembles that model." Pildes & Niemi, supra, at 585-586 (footnote omitted).
The reason that use of the predominant motive standard in reviewing a districting decision is bound to fail is more fundamental than that: in the political environment in which race can affect election results, many of these traditional districting principles cannot be applied without taking race into account and are thus, as a practical matter, inseparable from the supposedly illegitimate racial considerations. See Pildes & Niemi, supra, at 578 ("[R]ace frequently correlates with other socioeconomic factors. In evaluating oddly shaped districts, this correlation will require courts to attempt to untangle legitimate communities of interest from the now-illegitimate one of race. If blacks as blacks cannot be grouped into a 'highly irregular' district, but urban residents or the poor can, how will courts distinguish these contexts, and under what mixed-motive standard?"); Issacharoff, Constitutional Contours 58 ("Given the palpability of racial concerns in the political arena, [Miller's causation standard could] either doom all attempts to distribute political power in multi-ethnic communities or . . . fail to provide a basis for distinguishing proper from improper considerations in redistricting").
If, for example, a legislature may draw district lines to preserve the integrity of a given community, leaving it intact so that all of its members are served by one representative, this objective is inseparable from preserving the community's racial identity when the community is characterized, or even self-defined, by the race of the majority of those who live there. This is an old truth, having been recognized every time the political process produced an Irish or Italian or Polish ward.
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