998
Kennedy, J., concurring
966). And, as the plurality further holds in a portion of its predominant-factor analysis that is central to the narrow-tailoring inquiry, District 30 also involved the illicit use of race as a proxy when legislators shifted blocs of African-American voters to districts of incumbent Democrats in order to promote partisan interests. See ante, at 968-970.
Narrow tailoring is absent in Districts 18 and 29 as well. Although the State could have drawn either a majority-African-American or majority-Hispanic district in Harris County without difficulty, there is no evidence that two reasonably compact majority-minority districts could have been drawn there. Of the major alternative plans considered below, only the Owens-Pate plan drew majority-African-American and majority-Hispanic districts in Harris County, App. 142, but those districts were not compact. Section 2 does not require the State to create two noncompact majority-minority districts just because a compact district could be drawn for either minority independently. See ante, at 979 ("§ 2 does not require a State to create, on predominantly racial lines, a district that is not 'reasonably compact' "); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1024 (1994) (affirming, upon a finding of no vote dilution, District Court decision not to give § 2 remedies to both African-Americans and Hispanics because population overlap made the remedies mutually exclusive). The race-based districting that the State performed in drawing Districts 18, 29, and 30 was not justified by § 2, or indeed by any other compelling interest, either real or assumed. That itself suffices to defeat the State's claim that those three districts were narrowly tailored. Shaw II, ante, at 915-918. (In this respect, I disagree with the apparent suggestion in Justice O'Connor's separate concurrence that a court should conduct a second predominant-factor inquiry in deciding whether a district was narrowly tailored, see ante, at 994. There is nothing in
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