Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
the plurality opinion or any opinion of the Court to support that proposition. The simple question is whether the race-based districting was reasonably necessary to serve a compelling interest.)
While § 2 does not require a noncompact majority-minority district, neither does it forbid it, provided that the rationale for creating it is proper in the first instance. Districts not drawn for impermissible reasons or according to impermissible criteria may take any shape, even a bizarre one. States are not prevented from taking into account race-neutral factors in drawing permissible majority-minority districts. If, however, the bizarre shape of the district is attributable to race-based districting unjustified by a compelling interest (e. g., gratuitous race-based districting or use of race as a proxy for other interests), such districts may "cause constitutional harm insofar as they convey the message that political identity is, or should be, predominantly racial," ante, at 980. While districts "may pass strict scrutiny without having to defeat rival compact districts designed by plaintiffs' experts in endless 'beauty contests,' " ante, at 977, the District Court was right to declare unconstitutional the egregious, unjustified race-based districting that occurred here.
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Scalia joins, concurring in the judgment.
In my view, application of strict scrutiny in this suit was never a close question. I cannot agree with Justice O'Connor's assertion that strict scrutiny is not invoked by the intentional creation of majority-minority districts. See ante, at 958. Though Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 649 (1993) (Shaw I), expressly reserved that question, we effectively resolved it in subsequent cases. Only last Term, in Ada-rand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995), we vigorously asserted that all governmental racial classifica-
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