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Opinion of the Court
held forth the possibility of requiring at-large elections. With all this threat of judicially imposed at-large elections, and (as far as we are aware) no threat of a legislatively imposed change to at-large elections, it is most unlikely that § 2c was directed solely at legislative reapportionment.
Nor have the courts ever thought so. To the contrary, every court that has addressed the issue has held that § 2c requires courts, when they are remedying a failure to redistrict constitutionally, to draw single-member districts whenever possible. The first court to examine § 2c, just two weeks after the statute was enacted, was the three-judge District Court in Missouri that had previously threatened to order at-large elections in accordance with § 2a(c)(5). In its decision on December 29, 1967, that court observed that the enactment of § 2c had "relieved [it] of the prior existing Congressional command to order that the 1968 and succeeding congressional elections in Missouri be held at large," Preisler v. Secretary of State of Missouri, 279 F. Supp. 952, 969 (WD Mo. 1967), aff'd, 394 U. S. 526 (1969), and accordingly reversed its prior position and stated that it would fashion a districting plan if the State failed to fulfill its duty. Four years later, the Supreme Court of Virginia denied a writ of mandamus directing at-large elections to replace an allegedly unconstitutional Redistricting Act, on the ground that by reason of § 2c "we cannot legally issue the writ." Simpson v. Mahan, 212 Va. 416, 417, 185 S. E. 2d 47, 48 (1971). The next year the Supreme Court of California reached the same conclusion that § 2c required it to establish single-member districts, see Legislature v. Reinecke, 6 Cal. 3d 595, 602-603, 492 P. 2d 385, 390 (1972), a conclusion that it reaffirmed in 1982, see Assembly of State of Cal. v. Deukmejian, 30 Cal. 3d 638, 664, 639 P. 2d 939, 955 (1982). In Shayer v. Kirkpatrick, 541 F. Supp. 922, 926 (WD Mo.), aff'd sub nom. Schatzle v. Kirkpatrick, 456 U. S. 966 (1982), the District Court concluded that "nothing in section 2c suggests any limitation on its applicability," and declined to order at-large elections
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