In the case of Wise, Mayor of Dallas, et al. v. Lipscomb et al., 1977, the Supreme Court ruled on a dispute regarding electoral districting in Dallas, Texas. The city had been using an at-large voting system which was challenged by African-American residents who claimed it violated their rights under the Voting Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment due to racial discrimination. A federal court agreed with this claim and ordered that single-member districts be created instead. However, when these new districts were drawn up by local officials without any further input from courts or plaintiffs - resulting in only two predominantly black districts out of eight total - another lawsuit was filed claiming this still did not provide fair representation for minority voters. The Supreme Court held that while lower courts could order changes to discriminatory election systems if necessary to protect constitutional rights (as they did initially), they should defer as much as possible to local authorities' judgement about how best to implement those changes (as happened with drawing up new district boundaries). This decision affirmed both principles: judicial intervention can be needed against racially biased voting practices but also has its limits where democratic self-governance is concerned.

In the dissenting opinion for Wise, Mayor of Dallas, et al. v. Lipscomb et al., Justice Thurgood Marshall argued that the majority's decision was a departure from established precedent regarding voting rights and racial discrimination. He contended that by allowing local governments to maintain at-large election systems even when they were shown to dilute minority votes, the Court was effectively endorsing discriminatory practices in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Furthermore, he criticized their reliance on "local autonomy" as an excuse not to intervene in such cases, arguing that this principle should not be used as a shield for institutionalized racism or other forms of inequality.