Thomas, J., dissenting
cases. Ante, at 28, n. 8. That conclusion, however, is the obvious implication of the majority’s reasoning and rhetoric. See ante, at 27 (decrying a “map-comparison test” as “flawed in its fundamentals” even if it involves concededly “adequate comparators”); see also ante, at 17–18 (stating that the “focu[s]” of §2 analysis is “on the specific illustrative maps that a plaintiff adduces,” leaving unstated the implication that other algorithmically generated maps are irrelevant). The majority in effect, if not in word, thus forecloses any meaningful use of computer evidence to help locate the undiluted benchmark.
There are two critical problems with this fiat. The first, which the majority seems to recognize yet fails to resolve, is that excluding such computer evidence from view cannot be reconciled with §2’s command to consider “the totality of circumstances.”[1] Second—and more fundamentally—the reasons that the majority gives for downplaying the relevance of computer evidence would more logically support a holding that there is no judicially manageable way of applying §2’s results test to single-member districts. The majority waxes about the “myriad considerations” that go into districting, the “difficult, contestable choices” those considerations require, and how “[n]othing in §2 provides an an-
- ↑ The majority lodges a similar accusation against the State’s arguments (or what it takes to be the State’s arguments). See ante, at 18 (“Alabama suggests there is only one ‘circumstance’ that matters—how the State’s map stacks up relative to the benchmark” (alteration omitted)). But its rebuke is misplaced. The “totality of circumstances” means that courts must consider all circumstances relevant to an issue. It does not mean that they are forbidden to attempt to define the substantive standard that governs that issue. In arguing that a vote-dilution claim requires judging a State’s plan relative to an undiluted benchmark to be drawn from the totality of circumstances—including, where probative, the results of districting simulations—the State argues little more than what we have long acknowledged. See Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 480 (1997).
