500
Souter, J., dissenting
or not the decreases in BVAP and African American voter registration in those districts are likely to produce retrogressive effects").
This indisputable recognition, that context determines the effect of decreasing minority numbers for purposes of the § 5 enquiry, points to the nub of this case, and the District Court's decision boils down to a judgment about what the evidence showed about that context. The District Court found that the United States had offered evidence of racial polarization in the contested districts,3 id., at 86, and it found that Georgia had failed to present anything relevant on that issue. Georgia, the District Court said, had "provided the court with no competent, comprehensive information regarding white crossover voting or levels of polarization in individual districts across the State." Id., at 88. In particular, the District Court found it "impossible to extrapolate" anything about the level of racial polarization from the statistical submissions of Georgia's lone expert witness. Id., at 85. And the panel majority took note that Georgia's expert "admitted on cross-examination" that his evidence simply did not address racial polarization: "the whole point of my analysis," the expert stated, "is not to look at polarization per se. The question is not whether or not blacks and whites in general vote for different candidates." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).
Accordingly, the District Court explained that Georgia's expert:
3 The majority cites the District Court's comment that " 'the United States' evidence was extremely limited in scope—focusing only on three contested districts in the State Senate plan.' " Ante, at 474 (quoting 195 F. Supp. 2d, at 37). The District Court correctly did not require the United States to prove that the plan was retrogressive. As the District Court explained: "[u]ltimately, the burden of proof in this matter lies with the State. We look to the State to explain why retrogression is not present, and to prove the absence of racially polarized voting that might diminish African American voting strength in light of several districts' decreased BVAPs." Id., at 86.
Page: Index Previous 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007