350
Opinion of Souter, J.
spondingly discriminatory intent. With the history, the implication of intent speaks louder, and it grows more forceful still after a closer look at two aspects of the dilutive impact of the Police Jury plan.
First, the plan includes no majority-black districts even though residential and voting patterns in Bossier Parish meet the three conditions we identified in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50-51, as opening the door to drawing majority-minority districts to put minority voters on an equal footing with others. The first Gingles condition is that "the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district." Id., at 50. The Board does not dispute that black voters in Bossier Parish satisfy this criterion. The Board joined in a stipulation of the parties that in 1991, "it was obvious that a reasonably compact black-majority district could be drawn within Bossier City," App. to Juris. Statement 154a-155a (Stipulation 36); see also 1 Tr. 60 (statement of Board member Barry Musgrove), and that the NAACP plan demonstrated that two such districts could have been drawn in the parish, see App. to Juris. Statement 192a (Stipulation 143).5 As to the second and third Gingles conditions, that the minority population be politically cohesive and that the majority-white block voting be enough to defeat the minority's preferred candidate, see Gingles, supra, at 51, the Government introduced expert testimony showing such polarization in Bossier Parish's voting patterns. See App. to Juris. Statement 201a-
5 While the cartographer hired by the Board stated during the redistricting process that the parish's black population was too dispersed to draw a majority-black district, he later acknowledged that in fact two such districts could be drawn, see App. to Juris. Statement 160a- 161a (Stipulations 52, 53), and not only the original NAACP plans but also the Cooper Plans, two alternative plans developed by an expert for the defendant-intervenors, demonstrated as much, see App. 238 (Cooper Plans); App. to Juris. Statement 193a (Stipulation 147).
Page: Index Previous 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007