Louisiana v. Callais · ¶141

The problem, as even the majority recognizes, was “that a focus on discriminatory intent, rather than discriminatory effects, would defeat worthy claims because of the difficulty of proving intentional discrimination.” Ante, at 95. It is the rare legislature, as the history of voting discrimination shows, that cannot camoufage racial targeting with race- neutral justifications. For that reason, Bolden brought vote-dilution claims to a near-standstill. The Department of Justice shelved the dilution cases it had intended to bring; and private plaintiffs fled just 10 such suits in the next year, compared with 60 the year before. See A. Berman, Give Us the Ballot 135 (2015). States, it seemed, could make minority votes meaningless without ever running into the Voting Rights Act.

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