(a) Only if there is purposeful discrimination can there be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. And this principle applies to claims of racial discrimination affecting voting just as it does to other claims of racial discrimination. Pp. 66-68.

(b) Disproportionate effects alone are insufficient to establish a claim of unconstitutional racial vote dilution. Where the character of a law is readily explainable on grounds apart from race, as would nearly always be true where, as here, an entire system of local governance is brought into question, disproportionate impact alone cannot be decisive, and courts must look to other evidence to support a finding of discriminatory purpose. Pp. 68-70.

(c) Even assuming that an at-large municipal electoral system such as Mobile's is constitutionally indistinguishable from the election of a few members of a state legislature in multimember districts, it is clear that the evidence in this case fell far short of showing that appellants "conceived or operated [a] purposeful devic[e] to further racial . . . discrimination," Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 149. Pp. 70-74.

(d) The Equal Protection Clause does not require proportional representation as an imperative of political organization. While the Clause confers a substantive right to participate in elections on an equal basis with other qualified voters, this right does not protect any "political group," however defined, from electoral defeat. Since Mobile is a unitary electoral district and the Commission elections are conducted at large, there can be no claim that the "one person, one vote" principle has been violated, and therefore nobody's vote has been "diluted" in the sense in which that word was used in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533. Pp. 75-80.

MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN concluded that the relief afforded appellees by the District Court was not commensurate with the sound exercise of judicial discretion. The court at least should have considered alternative remedial orders to converting Mobile's government to a mayorcouncil system, and in failing to do so the court appears to have been overly concerned with eliminating at-large elections per se, rather than with structuring an electoral system that provided an opportunity for black voters to participate in the city's government on an equal footing with whites. Pp. 80-83.

MR. JUSTICE STEVENS concluded that the proper standard for adjudging the constitutionality of a political structure, such as Mobile's, that treats all individuals as equals but adversely affects the political strength of an identifiable minority group, is the same whether the minority is identified by a racial, ethnic, religious, or economic characteristic; that Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, suggests that the standard asks

(1) whether the political structure is manifestly not the product of a routine or traditional decision, (2) whether it has a significant adverse impact on a minority group, and (3) whether it is unsupported by any neutral justification and thus was either totally irrational or entirely motivated by a desire to curtail the political strength of the minority; and that the standard focuses on the objective effects of the political decision rather than the subjective motivation of the decisionmaker. Under this standard the choice to retain Mobile's commission form of government must be accepted as constitutionally permissible even though the choice may well be the product of mixed motivation, some of which is invidious. Pp. 83-94.

STEWART, J., announced the Court's judgment and delivered an opinion, in which BURGER, C. J., and POWELL and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, post, p. 80. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 83. BRENNAN, J., post, p. 94, WHITE, J., post, p. 94, and MARSHALL, J., post, p. 103, filed dissenting opinions.

Charles S. Rhyne reargued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief on reargument were C. B. Arendall, Jr., William C. Tidwell III, Fred G. Collins, and William S. Rhyne. With him on the briefs on the original argument were Messrs. Arendall, Collins, and Rhyne, Donald A. Carr, and Martin W. Matzen.

J. U. Blacksher reargued the cause for appellees. With him on the briefs were Larry Menefee, Jack Greenberg, and Eric Schnapper.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Turner reargued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. On the brief were Solicitor General McCree, Assistant Attorney General Days, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Elinor Hadley Stillman, Brian K. Landsberg, Jessica Dunsay Silver, Dennis J. Dimsey, and Miriam R. Eisenstein.*

*Charles A. Bane, Thomas D. Barr, Norman Redlich, Frank R. Parker, and Robert A. Murphy filed a brief for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law as amicus curiae urging affirmance.

MR. JUSTICE STEWART announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE POWELL, and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST joined.

The city of Mobile, Ala., has since 1911 been governed by a City Commission consisting of three members elected by the voters of the city at large. The question in this case is whether this at-large system of municipal elections violates the rights of Mobile's Negro voters in contravention of federal statutory or constitutional law.

The appellees brought this suit in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Alabama as a class action on behalf of all Negro citizens of Mobile.1 Named as defendants were the city and its three incumbent Commissioners, who are the appellants before this Court. The complaint alleged that the practice of electing the City Commissioners at large unfairly diluted the voting strength of Negroes in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and of the Fifteenth Amendment. Following a bench trial, the District Court found that the constitutional rights of the appellees had been violated, entered a judgment in their favor, and ordered that the City Commission be disestablished and replaced by a municipal government consisting of a Mayor and a City Council with members elected from single-member districts. 423 F. Supp. 384.3 The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in its entirety, 571 F. 2d 238, agreeing that Mobile's at-large elections operated to discriminate against Negroes in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, id., at 245, and finding that the remedy formulated by the District Court was

1 Approximately 35.4% of the residents of Mobile are Negro.

279 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973. The complaint also contained claims based on the First and Thirteenth Amendments and on 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and 42 U. S. C. § 1985 (3) (1976 ed., Supp. II). Those claims have not been pressed in this Court.

3 The District Court has stayed its orders pending disposition of the present appeal.

55

Opinion of STEWART, J.

appropriate. An appeal was taken to this Court, and we noted probable jurisdiction, 439 U. S. 815. The case was originally argued in the 1978 Term, and was reargued in the present Term.

I

In Alabama, the form of municipal government a city may adopt is governed by state law. Until 1911, cities not covered by specific legislation were limited to governing themselves through a mayor and city council. In that year, the Alabama Legislature authorized every large municipality to adopt a commission form of government. Mobile established its City Commission in the same year, and has maintained that basic system of municipal government ever since.

The three Commissioners jointly exercise all legislative, executive, and administrative power in the municipality. They are required after election to designate one of their number as Mayor, a largely ceremonial office, but no formal provision is made for allocating specific executive or administrative duties among the three. As required by the state law enacted in 1911, each candidate for the Mobile City Commission runs for election in the city at large for a term of four years in one of three numbered posts, and may be elected

Ala. Code § 11-43 (1975).

5 Act No. 281, 1911 Ala. Acts, p. 330.

In 1965 the Alabama Legislature enacted Act No. 823, 1965 Ala. Acts, p. 1539, § 2 of which designated specific administrative tasks to be performed by each Commissioner and provided that the title of Mayor be rotated among the three. After the present lawsuit was commenced, the city of Mobile belatedly submitted Act No. 823 to the Attorney General of the United States under §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. The Attorney General objected to the legislation on the ground that the city had not shown that § 2 of the Act would not have the effect of abridging the right of Negroes to vote. No suit has been brought in the District Court for the District of Columbia to seek clearance under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act and, accordingly, §2 of Act No. 823 is in abeyance.

only by a majority of the total vote. This is the same basic electoral system that is followed by literally thousands of municipalities and other local governmental units throughout the Nation."

II

Although required by general principles of judicial administration to do so, Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U. S. 101, 105; Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347 (Brandeis, J., concurring), neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals addressed the complaint's statutory claimthat the Mobile electoral system violates § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even a cursory examination of that claim, however, clearly discloses that it adds nothing to the appellees' complaint.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act provides:

"No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973.

Assuming, for present purposes, that there exists a private right of action to enforce this statutory provision, it is apparent that the language of § 2 no more than elaborates upon that of the Fifteenth Amendment, and the sparse legislative his

7 According to the 1979 Municipal Year Book, most municipalities of over 25,000 people conducted at-large elections of their city commissioners or council members as of 1977. Id., at 98-99. It is reasonable to suppose that an even larger majority of other municipalities did so. 8 Cf. Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544. america Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. Lewis, 444 U. S. 11; Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560.

• Section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment provides:

But see TransTouche Ross &

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."