Thornburg v. Gingles

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Thornburg v. Gingles
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 4, 1985 Decided June 30, 1986
Full case name	Lacy Thornburg, Attorney General of North Carolina, et al. v. Ralph Gingles, et al.
Citations	478 U.S. 30 (more) 106 S. Ct. 2752; 92 L. Ed. 2d 25; 1986 U.S. LEXIS 121; 54 U.S.L.W. 4877; 4 Fed. R. Serv. 3d (Callaghan) 1082
Case history
Prior	Gingles v. Edmisten], 590 F. Supp. 345 (E.D.N.C. 1984).
Holding
The inquiry into the existence of vote dilution caused by submergence in a multimember district is district specific. A successful claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires evidence that an affected minority group is sufficiently large to elect a representative of its choice, that the minority group is politically cohesive, and white majority voters cast their ballots sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of the minority group.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan (Parts I, II, III–A, III–B, IV–A, V), joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
Plurality	Brennan (Part III–C), joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
Plurality	Brennan (Part IV–B), joined by White
Concurrence	White
Concurrence	O'Connor (in judgment), joined by Burger, Powell, Rehnquist
Concur/dissent	Stevens, joined by Marshall, Blackmun
Laws applied
Voting Rights Act § 2

Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court case in which a unanimous Court found that "the legacy of official discrimination ... acted in concert with the multimember districting scheme to impair the ability of "cohesive groups of black voters to participate equally in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice." The ruling resulted in the invalidation of districts in the North Carolina General Assembly and led to more single-member districts in state legislatures.