Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023)
5
Opinion of the Court
only to the extent that it approximated a standard of proportional representation by race.” Boyd & Markman 1392.
The Attorney General had the same concern. The effects
test “would be triggered whenever election results did not
mirror the population mix of a particular community,” he
wrote, producing “essentially a quota system for electoral
politics.” N. Y. Times, Mar. 27, 1982, p. 23.
The impasse was not resolved until late April 1982, when
Senator Bob Dole proposed a compromise. Boyd & Markman 1414. Section 2 would include the effects test that
many desired but also a robust disclaimer against proportionality. Seeking to navigate any tension between the two,
the Dole Amendment borrowed language from a Fourteenth
Amendment case of ours, White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755
(1973), which many in Congress believed would allow
courts to consider effects but avoid proportionality. The
standard for liability in voting cases, White explained, was
whether “the political processes leading to nomination and
election were not equally open to participation by the group
in question—[in] that its members had less opportunity
than did other residents in the district to participate in the
political processes and to elect legislators of their choice.”
Id., at 766.
The Dole compromise won bipartisan support and, on
June 18, the Senate passed the 1982 amendments by an
overwhelming margin, 85–8. Eleven days later, President
Reagan signed the Act into law. The amended §2 reads as
follows:
“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting
or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or
applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the
right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color . . . as provided in subsection (b).
“(b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if,