996
Kennedy, J., concurring
Justice Kennedy, concurring.
I join the plurality opinion, but the statements in Part II of the opinion that strict scrutiny would not apply to all cases of intentional creation of majority-minority districts, ante, at 958, 962-963, require comment. Those statements are unnecessary to our decision, for strict scrutiny applies here. I do not consider these dicta to commit me to any position on the question whether race is predominant whenever a State, in redistricting, foreordains that one race be the majority in a certain number of districts or in a certain part of the State. In my view, we would no doubt apply strict scrutiny if a State decreed that certain districts had to be at least 50 percent white, and our analysis should be no different if the State so favors minority races.
We need not answer this question here, for there is ample evidence that otherwise demonstrates the predominance of race in Texas' redistricting, as the plurality shows, ante, at 958-976. And this question was not at issue in DeWitt v. Wilson, 856 F. Supp. 1409 (ED Cal. 1994), summarily aff'd in part and dism'd in part, 515 U. S. 1170 (1995). (I note that our summary affirmance in DeWitt stands for no proposition other than that the districts reviewed there were constitutional. We do not endorse the reasoning of the district court when we order summary affirmance of the judgment. Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U. S. 173, 176 (1977) (per curiam); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 671 (1974).)
On the narrow-tailoring issue, I agree that the districts challenged here were not reasonably necessary to serve the assumed compelling state interest in complying with § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U. S. C. § 1973. As the plurality opinion indicates, ante, at 978, in order for compliance with § 2 to be a compelling interest, the State must have a strong basis in the evidence for believing that all three of the threshold conditions for a § 2 claim are met:
"[F]irst, 'that [the minority group] is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in
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