32 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS Opinion of the Court Allen did not address the central issue here. We had no occasion in Allen to confront the presumption that compliance with §2 may serve as a compelling interest for a State to satisfy strict scrutiny. Indeed, Allen did not discuss the Fourteenth Amendment at all. Here, by contrast, it is the linchpin of this suit.2 In addition, our decision in Allen did not reach two pivotal issues that we now squarely address. First, we left open whether “race-based redistricting” under §2, even if permissible when the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1982, could “extend indefinitely into the future” despite significant changes in relevant conditions. 599 U. S., at 45 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part); see Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 557 (requiring assessment of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in light of current conditions). Second, because the State in Allen did not cite partisan goals in defending its map, we did not address whether §2 plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics in proving their case. Indeed, this is our first occasion to address the implications of Rucho in a vote-dilution case. Failing to account for political considerations in redistricting, as explained above, can allow plaintiffs to undo a State’s legitimate, nonracial decisions under the banner of §2. In light of our answers to these questions left open in Allen, we now update the Gingles test to ensure a constitutional reading and application of §2. —————— 2 The dissent claims that the Fourteenth Amendment is irrelevant to our analysis, post, at 39–40, n. 11 (opinion of KAGAN, J.), but the dissent appears to forget—or at least tries to lead readers to forget—that the decision before us is based on the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs claimed, and the court below held, that the map enacted by the state legislature in SB8 impermissibly discriminated on the basis of race and thus violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. See supra, at 16.

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