Louisiana v. Callais · ¶186

Those well-established precepts permit Congress to do what Congress did when it amended Section 2—prohibit electoral schemes based on their vote-diluting effects, regardless whether a State could offer up some race-neutral explanation. Congress then knew that it possessed such enforcement power; our decisions settling the issue were landmarks of the civil rights era. And Congress decided to use its authority. It did not make asserted state interests irrelevant: Those interests, indeed, had to be considered in the “totality of circumstances” inquiry Congress prescribed. § 10301(b); see supra, at 146. But neither did Congress make those interests a nearly impregnable shield, as the majority does today. It understood, just as the Court had, that even race-neutral actions could perpetuate purposeful racial discrimination. And it realized, again in the same vein as the Court, that…

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