Opinion of the Court
the 1980 decision City of Mobile, a case about districting. And—as the dissent itself acknowledges—“Congress drew §2(b)’s current operative language” from the 1973 decision White v. Regester, post, at 4, n. 3 (opinion of Thomas, J.), a case that was also about districting (in fact, a case that invalidated two multimember districts in Texas and ordered them redrawn into single-member districts, 412 U. S., at 765). This was not lost on anyone when §2 was amended. Indeed, it was the precise reason that the contentious debates over proportionality raged—debates that would have made little sense if §2 covered only poll taxes and the like, as the dissent contends.
We also reject Alabama’s argument that §2 as applied to redistricting is unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment. According to Alabama, that Amendment permits Congress to legislate against only purposeful discrimination by States. See Brief for Alabama 73. But we held over 40 years ago “that, even if §1 of the [Fifteenth] Amendment prohibits only purposeful discrimination, the prior decisions of this Court foreclose any argument that Congress may not, pursuant to §2 [of the Fifteenth Amendment] outlaw voting practices that are discriminatory in effect.” City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 173 (1980). The VRA’s “ban on electoral changes that are discriminatory in effect,” we emphasized, “is an appropriate method of promoting the purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment.” Id., at 177. As City of Rome recognized, we had reached the very same conclusion in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, a decision issued right after the VRA was first enacted. 383 U. S., at 308–309, 329–337; see also Brnovich, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3).
Alabama further argues that, even if the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes the effects test of §2, that Amendment does not authorize race-based redistricting as a remedy for §2 violations. But for the last four decades, this Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly applied
