diff --git a/Lib/test/test_zoneinfo/test_zoneinfo.py b/Lib/test/test_zoneinfo/test_zoneinfo.py
index 3766ceac8385f2..70f3514373d56a 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_zoneinfo/test_zoneinfo.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_zoneinfo/test_zoneinfo.py
@@ -24,11 +24,8 @@
 lzma = import_module('lzma')
 py_zoneinfo, c_zoneinfo = test_support.get_modules()
 
-try:
-    importlib.metadata.metadata("tzdata")
-    HAS_TZDATA_PKG = True
-except importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
-    HAS_TZDATA_PKG = False
+# Gentoo installs a dummy `tzdata` package
+HAS_TZDATA_PKG = False
 
 ZONEINFO_DATA = None
 ZONEINFO_DATA_V1 = None