Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Souter, J., dissenting
Along with this endemic unpredictability has come the destruction of any clear incentive for the States with substantial minority populations to take action to avoid vote dilution. Before Shaw, state politicians who recognized that minority vote dilution had occurred, or was likely to occur without redistricting aimed at preventing it, could not only urge their colleagues to do the right thing under the Fourteenth Amendment, but counsel them in terrorem that losing a dilution case would bring liability for counsel fees under 42 U. S. C. § 1988(b) or 42 U. S. C. § 1973l(e). See Issacharoff, Constitutional Contours 48 ("Minority political actors could leverage not only their political power but the enforcement provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the threat of suit under Section 2 of the Act against adverse districting decisions"); cf. Hastert v. Illinois State Bd. of Election Commr's, 28 F. 3d 1430, 1444 (CA7 1993) (awarding fees to the prevailing parties in a case in which the state legislature failed to draw congressional districts, over the Board of Elections's objection that it had "no interest in the eventual outcome except that there be an outcome" for it to implement) (emphasis in original). But this argument is blunted now, perhaps eliminated in practice, by the risk of counsel fees in a Shaw I action. States seeking to comply in good faith with the requirements of federal civil rights laws "now find themselves walking a tightrope: if they draw majority-black districts they face lawsuits under the equal protection clause; if they do not, they face both objections under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and lawsuits under section 2." Karlan, Post-Shaw Era 289. See ante, at 1037 (Stevens, J., dissenting) ("On one hand, States will risk violating the Voting Rights Act if they fail to create majority-minority districts. If they create those districts, however, they may open themselves to liability under Shaw and its progeny"). The States, in short, have been told to get things just right, no dilution and no predominant consider-
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