Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, 107 (1996)

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Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)

Opinion of O'Connor, J.

And, as we have noted above, the district drawn in order to satisfy § 2 must not subordinate traditional districting principles to race substantially more than is "reasonably necessary" to avoid § 2 liability. Districts 18, 29, and 30 fail to meet these requirements.

We assume, without deciding, that the State had a "strong basis in evidence" for finding the second and third threshold conditions for § 2 liability to be present. We have, however, already found that all three districts are bizarrely shaped and far from compact, and that those characteristics are predominantly attributable to gerrymandering that was racially motivated and/or achieved by the use of race as a proxy. See Part II, supra. District 30, for example, reaches out to grab small and apparently isolated minority communities which, based on the evidence presented, could not possibly form part of a compact majority-minority district, and does so in order to make up for minority populations closer to its core that it shed in a further suspect use of race as a proxy to further neighboring incumbents' interests. See supra, at 965-966, 969-973.

These characteristics defeat any claim that the districts are narrowly tailored to serve the State's interest in avoiding liability under § 2, because § 2 does not require a State to create, on predominantly racial lines, a district that is not "reasonably compact." See Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1008 (1994). If, because of the dispersion of the minority population, a reasonably compact majority-minority district cannot be created, § 2 does not require a majority-minority district; if a reasonably compact district can be created, nothing in § 2 requires the race-based creation of a district that is far from compact.

Appellants argue that bizarre shaping and noncompactness do not raise narrow tailoring concerns. Appellants Lawson et al. claim that under Shaw I and Miller, "[s]hape is relevant only as evidence of an improper motive."

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