16
Opinion of the Court
and found that both the nature of the right asserted by respondents—the right to have one's vote counted equally— and the nature of the affected classes—"certain identifiable minority groups"—required that the Secretary's decision be given heightened scrutiny. 34 F. 3d, at 1128. The court drew from the District Court's decision "implicit" findings: that the census did not achieve equality of voting power as nearly as practicable; "that for most purposes and for most of the population [the PES-based] adjustment would result in a more accurate count than the original census; and that the adjustment would lessen the disproportionate under-counting of minorities." Id., at 1129.
The court recognized two significant differences between the intrastate districting cases and the instant action: first, that this case involves the federal rather than a state government; and second, that constitutional requirements make it impossible to achieve precise equality in voting power nationwide. Ibid. But it found these differences nondeterminative, deciding that no deference was owed to the Executive Branch on a question of law, and that the "impossibility of achieving precise mathematical equality is no excuse for [the Federal Government] not making [the] mandated good-faith effort." Ibid. The court found that the respondents here had established a prima facie violation of the Wesberry standard both by showing that the PES-based adjustment would increase numerical accuracy, and by virtue of the fact that "the differential undercount in the 1990 enumeration was plainly foreseeable and foreseen." 34 F. 3d, at 1130- 1131. The court held that the Secretary's decision would have to be vacated as unconstitutional unless on remand he could show that the decision not to adjust "(a) furthers a governmental objective that is legitimate, and (b) is essential for the achievement of that objective." Id., at 1131.
We think that the Court of Appeals erred in holding the "one person-one vote" standard of Wesberry and its progeny applicable to the action at hand. For several reasons, the
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