Thomas, J., dissenting
are not merely foreign to the Amendments. Rather, they are radically inconsistent with the Amendments’ command that government treat citizens as individuals and their “goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.” Ibid.
Those notions are, however, the values at the heart of §2 as construed by the District Court and the majority. As applied here, the statute effectively considers it a legal wrong by the State if white Alabamians vote for candidates from one political party at high enough rates, provided that black Alabamians vote for candidates from the other party at a still higher rate. And the statute remedies that wrong by requiring the State to engage in race-based redistricting in the direction of proportional control.
I am not certain that Congress’ enforcement power could ever justify a statute so at odds “ ‘with the letter and spirit of the constitution.’ ” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 555. If it could, it must be because Congress “identified a history and pattern” of actual constitutional violations that, for some reason, required extraordinary prophylactic remedies. Garrett, 531 U. S., at 368. But the legislative record of the 1982 amendments is devoid of any showing that might justify §2’s blunt approximation of a “racial register for allocating representation on the basis of race.” Holder, 512 U. S., at 908 (opinion of Thomas, J.). To be sure, the Senate Judiciary Committee Report that accompanied the 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act “listed many examples of what the Committee took to be unconstitutional vote dilution.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (emphasis added). But the Report also showed the Committee’s fundamental lack of “concern with whether” those examples reflected the “intentional” discrimination required “to raise a constitutional issue.” Allen, 589 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 15). The Committee’s “principal reason” for rejecting discriminatory purpose was simply that it preferred an alternative legal standard; it thought Mobile’s intent test was
