The Supreme Court's decision in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) was an important victory for minority voting rights. Not only did the decision confirm that amended Section 2 eliminates the need to prove discriminatory intent in statutory vote dilution claims, but the three-part Gingles test developed by the Court also appears to simplify considerably the standard of proof to be applied in Section 2 districting challenges.

As noted in Chapter 2, the Court created a three-pronged test for vote dilution in an at-large or multimember district challenge. To establish a violation, “a bloc voting majority must usually be able to defeat candidates supported by a politically cohesive, geographically insular minority group” (1986, p. 49). This requires that plaintiffs satisfy three conditions:

These three elements seemingly establish a straightforward, objective test for proving unlawful vote dilution. However, at least partially because the opinion rendered in Gingles included a complex web of pluralities, concurrences, and dissents, not all Section 2 issues were resolved. The confusion in Gingles has also spawned considerable confusion in subsequent interpretations; a few points of contention have been resolved, but there are numerous conflicting views and inconsistent lower court decisions.