98
Opinion of the Court
one new district because of population growth, it would have to be majority-minority. This the Voting Rights Act does not require.
IV
Finally, appellants contend the District Court's plan violates the constitutional guarantee of one person, one vote under Article I, § 2. This provision requires congressional districts to achieve population equality "as nearly as is practicable." Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1, 7-8 (1964). Court-ordered districts are held to higher standards of population equality than legislative ones. A court-ordered plan should "ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation." Chapman v. Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 26-27 (1975); Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 414 (1977) (same). Here the District Court was not designing districts to remedy a one-person, one-vote violation, but courts should keep in mind that "absolute population equality [is] the paramount objective." Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 732 (1983). Slight deviations are allowed under certain circumstances. Chapman, supra, at 26 ("With a court plan, any deviation from approximate population equality must be supported by enunciation of historically significant state policy or unique features"); Connor, supra, at 419-420 (same); Karcher, supra, at 740 ("Any number of consistently applied legislative policies might justify some variance, including, for instance, making districts compact, respecting municipal boundaries, preserving the cores of prior districts, and avoiding contests between incumbent[s]").
To help in interpreting what follows, we explain a few terms. Overall population deviation is the difference in population between the two districts with the greatest disparity. Average population deviation is the average of all districts' deviation from perfect one-person, one-vote allocation. If population allocation in Georgia were perfect, each district would have 588,928 people, according to 1990 census data.
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