Second, the majority concludes that “neither over-proportionality in one area of the State nor substantial proportionality in the State as a whole
should ordinarily be used to offset a problem of vote dilution in one discrete area of the State.”
Ante at 843 (emphasis added). For this conclusion, the majority relies upon the Supreme Court's holdings in
Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 116 S.Ct. 1894, 135 L.Ed.2d 207 (1996) and
Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994), which collectively provide that a state may not remedy vote dilution in one area of a state by compliance with § 2 in another area. Indeed, as the majority acknowledges, the
De Grandy court scathingly critiqued the premise that “the rights of some minority voters under § 2 may be traded off against the rights of other members of the same minority class,”
512 U.S. at 1019, 114 S.Ct. 2647, and the
Shaw court plainly ruled that “the vote-dilution injuries suffered by ... persons [in one area of the State] are not remedied by creating a safe majority-black district somewhere else in the State.”
517 U.S. at 917, 116 S.Ct. 1894. Inexplicably, the majority reads ambiguity into these conclusions, and thereby leaves the door open to the notion that a state may dilute the vote of minority voters in ways that would otherwise violate § 2, as long as it grants equal opportunity to some other set of minority voters. This conclusion is contrary to the Supreme Court's interpretation of § 2, which clearly provides that a state
may not remedy vote dilution in one area by legal compliance in another.