Opinion of the Court
portionality, as our decisions have frequently demonstrated.
In Shaw v. Reno, for example, we considered the permissibility of a second majority-minority district in North Carolina, which at the time had 12 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives and a 20% black voting age population. 509 U. S. 630, 633–634 (1993). The second majority-minority district North Carolina drew was “160 miles long and, for much of its length, no wider than the [interstate] corridor.” Id., at 635. The district wound “in snakelike fashion through tobacco country, financial centers, and manufacturing areas until it gobble[d] in enough enclaves of black neighborhoods.” Id., at 635–636. Indeed, the district was drawn so imaginatively that one state legislator remarked: “[I]f you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district.” Id., at 636.
Though North Carolina believed the additional district was required by §2, we rejected that conclusion, finding instead that those challenging the map stated a claim of impermissible racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 655, 658. In so holding, we relied on the fact that the proposed district was not reasonably compact. Id., at 647. North Carolina had “concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district by disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions.” Ibid. (emphasis added). And “[a] reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise separated by geographical and political boundaries,” we said, raised serious constitutional concerns. Ibid. (emphasis added).
The same theme emerged in our 1995 decision Miller v. Johnson, where we upheld a district court’s finding that one of Georgia’s ten congressional districts was the product of an impermissible racial gerrymander. 515 U. S. 900, 906, 910–911. At the time, Georgia’s black voting age population
