It was not the criminal penalty that was held invalid, but the exaction of obedience to a rule or standard so vague and indefinite as really to be no standard at all. Any other means of exaction, such as declaring the transaction unlawful or stripping a participant of his rights under it, was equally within the principle of those cases.
Let the end be legitimate. Let it be within the scope of the constitution and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution are constitutional.
The courts ordinarily have not used these factors, nor does the Committee intend them to be used, as a mechanical “point-counting” device. The failure of the plaintiffs to establish any particular factor is not rebuttable evidence of non-dilution. Rather, the provision requires the court's overall judgment, based on the totality of circumstances and guided by those relevant factors in the particular case, of whether the voting strength of minority voters is, in the language of Fortson and Burns, “minimized or cancelled out.”
A remotely enacted plan ... that was adopted without racial motivations may become a vehicle for the exclusion of meaningful input because intervening *386 events cause the plan to work that way. When the more blatant obstacles to black access are struck down, such an at-large plan may operate to devalue black participation so as to ignore black needs.
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