RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BOARD

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320 OCTOBER TERM, 1999
Syllabus
RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL v. BOSSIER PARISH
SCHOOL BOARD
appeal from the united states district court for the
district of columbia
No. 98–405. Argued April 26, 1999—Reargued October 6, 1999—Decided
January 24, 2000*
Bossier Parish, Louisiana, a jurisdiction covered by § 5 of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, is thereby prohibited from enacting any change in
a “voting qualification[,] prerequisite[,] standard, practice, or proce-
dure” without first obtaining preclearance from either the Attorney
General or the District Court. When, following the 1990 census, the
Bossier Parish School Board (Board) submitted a proposed redistricting
plan to the Attorney General, she denied preclearance. The Board then
filed this preclearance action in the District Court. Section 5 author-
izes preclearance of a proposed voting change that “does not have the
purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right
to vote on account of race or color.” Appellants conceded that the
Board’s plan did not have a prohibited “effect” under § 5, since it was
not “retrogressive,” i. e., did not worsen the position of minority voters,
see Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, but claimed that it violated § 5
because it was enacted for a discriminatory “purpose.” The District
Court granted preclearance. On appeal, this Court disagreed with the
District Court’s proposition that all evidence of a dilutive (but non-
retrogressive) effect forbidden by § 2 was irrelevant to whether the
Board enacted the plan with a retrogressive purpose forbidden by § 5.
Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 486–487 (Bossier
Parish I). This Court vacated and remanded for further proceedings
as to the Board’s purpose in adopting its plan, id., at 486, leaving for the
District Court the question whether the § 5 purpose inquiry ever ex-
tends beyond the search for retrogressive intent, ibid. On remand, the
District Court again granted preclearance. Concluding, inter alia, that
there was no evidence of discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose,
the court left open the question whether § 5 prohibits preclearance of a
plan enacted with such a purpose.
*Together with No. 98–406, Price et al. v. Bossier Parish School Bd.,
also on appeal from the same court.

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Syllabus
Held:
1. The Court rejects the Board’s contention that these cases are
mooted by the fact that the 1992 plan will never again be used because
the next scheduled election will occur in 2002, when the Board will have
a new plan in place based upon data from the 2000 census. In at least
one respect, the 1992 plan will have probable continuing effect: It will
serve as the baseline against which appellee’s next voting plan will be
evaluated for preclearance purposes. Pp. 327–328.
2. In light of § 5’s language and Beer’s holding, § 5 does not prohibit
preclearance of a redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but
nonretrogressive purpose. Pp. 328–341.
(a) In order to obtain preclearance, a covered jurisdiction must
establish that the proposed change “does not have the purpose and will
not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on ac-
count of race or color.” The covered jurisdiction bears the burden of
persuasion on both points. See, e. g., Bossier Parish I, supra, at 478.
In Beer, the Court concluded that, in the context of a § 5 vote-dilution
claim, the phrase “abridging the right to vote on account of race or
color” limited the term “effect” to retrogressive effects. 425 U. S., at
141. Appellants’ contention that in qualifying the term “purpose,” the
very same phrase does not impose a limitation to retrogression, but
means discrimination more generally, is untenable. See BankAmerica
Corp. v. United States, 462 U. S. 122, 129. Richmond v. United States,
422 U. S. 358, 378–379, distinguished. Appellants argue that subject-
ing both prongs to the same limitation produces a purpose prong with
a trivial reach, covering only “incompetent retrogressors.” If this
were true—and if it were adequate to justify giving the very same
words different meanings when qualifying “purpose” and “effect”—
there would be instances in which this Court applied such a construction
to the innumerable statutes barring conduct with a particular “purpose
or effect,” yet appellants are unable to cite a single case. Moreover,
the purpose prong has value and effect even when it does not cover
conduct additional to that of a so-called incompetent retrogressor: The
Government need only refute a jurisdiction’s prima facie showing that
a proposed voting change does not have a retrogressive purpose, and
need not counter the jurisdiction’s evidence regarding actual retro-
gressive effect. Although virtually identical language in § 2(a) and the
Fifteenth Amendment has been read to refer not only to retrogression,
but to discrimination more generally, giving the language different
meaning in § 5 is faithful to the different context in which the term
“abridging” is used. Appellants’ reading would exacerbate the “sub-
stantial” federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already ex-
acts, Lopez v. Monterey County, 525 U. S. 266, 282, perhaps to the extent

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322 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
Opinion of the Court
of raising concerns about § 5’s constitutionality, see Miller v. Johnson,
515 U. S. 900, 926–927. The Court’s resolution of this issue renders
it unnecessary to address appellants’ challenge to the District Court’s
factual conclusion that there was no evidence of discriminatory but non-
retrogressive intent. Pp. 328–336.
(b) The Court rejects appellants’ contention that, notwithstand-
ing that Bossier Parish I explicitly “le[ft] open for another day” the
question whether § 5 extends to discriminatory but nonretrogressive in-
tent, 520 U. S., at 486, two of this Court’s prior decisions have already
reached the conclusion that it does. Dictum in Beer, supra, at 141,
and holding of Pleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462, distin-
guished. Pp. 337–341.
7 F. Supp. 2d 29, affirmed.
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, Part II of which was
unanimous, and Parts I, III, and IV of which were joined by Rehnquist,
C. J., and O’Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ. Thomas, J., filed a
concurring opinion, post, p. 341. Souter, J., filed an opinion concurring
in part and dissenting in part, in which Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer,
JJ., joined, post, p. 341. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which
Ginsburg, J., joined, post, p. 373. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion,
post, p. 374.
Paul R. Q. Wolfson reargued the cause for appellant in
No. 98–405. On the briefs on reargument was Solicitor
General Waxman. With Mr. Wolfson on the briefs on the
original argument were Mr. Waxman, Acting Assistant At-
torney General Lee, Deputy Solicitor General Underwood,
Mark L. Gross, and Louis E. Peraertz.
Patricia A. Brannan reargued the cause for appellants
in No. 98–406. With her on the briefs were John W. Bor-
kowski, Barbara R. Arnwine, Thomas J. Henderson, and
Edward Still.
Michael A. Carvin reargued the cause for appellee in both
cases. With him on the brief were David H. Thompson,
Craig S. Lerner, and Michael E. Rosman.
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases present the question whether § 5 of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as amended, 42 U. S. C.

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323 Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
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§ 1973c, prohibits preclearance of a redistricting plan enacted
with a discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose.
I
This is the second time the present cases are before us,
and we thus recite the facts and procedural history only in
brief. Like every other political subdivision of the State of
Louisiana, Bossier Parish, because of its history of discrimi-
natory voting practices, is a jurisdiction covered by § 5 of the
Voting Rights Act. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 1973c, 1973b(a), (b); 30
Fed. Reg. 9897 (1965). It is therefore prohibited from en-
acting any change in a “voting qualification or prerequisite
to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to
voting,” without first obtaining either administrative pre-
clearance from the Attorney General or judicial preclearance
from the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia. 42 U. S. C. § 1973c.
Bossier Parish is governed by a 12-member Police Jury
elected from single-member districts for 4-year terms. In
the early 1990’s, the Police Jury set out to redraw its elec-
toral districts in order to account for demographic changes
reflected in the decennial census. In 1991, it adopted a re-
districting plan which, like the plan then in effect, con-
tained no majority-black districts, although blacks made up
approximately 20% of the parish’s population. On May 28,
1991, the Police Jury submitted its new districting plan to
the Attorney General; two months later, the Attorney Gen-
eral granted preclearance.
The Bossier Parish School Board (Board) is constituted
in the same fashion as the Police Jury, and it too undertook
to redraw its districts after the 1990 census. During the
course of that redistricting, appellant-intervenor George
Price, president of the local chapter of the National As-
sociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
proposed that the Board adopt a plan with majority-black
districts. In the fall of 1992, amid some controversy, the

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Board rejected Price’s suggestion and adopted the Police
Jury’s 1991 redistricting plan as its own.
On January 4, 1993, the Board submitted its redistricting
plan to the Attorney General for preclearance. Although
the Attorney General had precleared the identical plan when
submitted by the Police Jury, she interposed a formal ob-
jection to the Board’s plan, asserting that “new informa-
tion”—specifically, the NAACP plan proposed by appellant-
intervenor Price—demonstrated that “black residents are
sufficiently numerous and geographically compact so as to
constitute a majority in two single-member districts.” App.
to Juris. Statement in No. 98–405, p. 235a. The Attorney
General disclaimed any attempt to compel the Board to
“adopt any particular plan,” but maintained that the Board
was “not free to adopt a plan that unnecessarily limits the
opportunity for minority voters to elect their candidates of
choice.” Ibid.
After the Attorney General denied the Board’s request for
reconsideration, the Board filed the present action for ju-
dicial preclearance of the 1992 plan in the United States Dis-
trict Court for the District of Columbia. Section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act authorizes preclearance of a proposed
voting change that “does not have the purpose and will not
have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on
account of race or color.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. Before the
District Court, appellants conceded that the Board’s plan
did not have a prohibited “effect” under § 5, since it did not
worsen the position of minority voters. (In Beer v. United
States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976), we held that a plan has a pro-
hibited “effect” only if it is retrogressive.) Instead, appel-
lants made two distinct claims. First, they argued that pre-
clearance should be denied because the Board’s plan, by
not creating as many majority-black districts as it should
create, violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars dis-
criminatory voting practices. Second, they contended that,

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although the Board’s plan would have no retrogressive effect,
it nonetheless violated § 5 because it was enacted for a dis-
criminatory “purpose.”
The District Court granted preclearance. Bossier Parish
School Bd. v. Reno, 907 F. Supp. 434 (DC 1995). As to the
first of appellants’ two claims, the District Court held that it
could not deny preclearance of a proposed voting change
under § 5 simply because the change violated § 2. Moreover,
in order to prevent the Government “[from doing] indirectly
what it cannot do directly,” the District Court stated that
it would “not permit section 2 evidence to prove discrimi-
natory purpose under section 5.” Id., at 445. As to the sec-
ond of appellants’ claims, the District Court concluded that
the Board had borne its burden of proving that the 1992 plan
was adopted for two legitimate, nondiscriminatory purposes:
to assure prompt preclearance (since the identical plan had
been precleared for the Police Jury), and to enable easy im-
plementation (since the adopted plan, unlike the NAACP’s
proposed plan, required no redrawing of precinct lines).
Id., at 447. Appellants filed jurisdictional statements in this
Court, and we noted probable jurisdiction. Reno v. Bossier
Parish School Bd., 517 U. S. 1232 (1996).
On appeal, we agreed with the District Court that a pro-
posed voting change cannot be denied preclearance simply
because it violates § 2, but disagreed with the proposition
that all evidence of a dilutive (but nonretrogressive) effect
forbidden by § 2 was irrelevant to whether the Board en-
acted the plan with a retrogressive purpose forbidden by § 5.
Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 486–487
(1997) (Bossier Parish I). Since some language in the Dis-
trict Court’s opinion left us uncertain whether the court had
in fact applied that proposition in its decision, we vacated
and remanded for further proceedings as to the Board’s pur-
pose in adopting the 1992 plan. Id., at 486. In light of our
disposition, we left open the additional question “whether

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the § 5 purpose inquiry ever extends beyond the search for
retrogressive intent.” Ibid. “The existence of such a pur-
pose,” we said, “and its relevance to § 5, are issues to be
decided on remand.” Ibid.
On remand, the District Court, in a comparatively brief
opinion relying on, but clarifying, its extensive earlier opin-
ion, again granted preclearance. 7 F. Supp. 2d 29 (DC 1998).
First, in response to our invitation to address the existence
of a discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose, the Dis-
trict Court summarily concluded that “the record will not
support a conclusion that extends beyond the presence or
absence of retrogressive intent.” Id., at 31. It noted that
one could “imagine a set of facts that would establish a ‘non-
retrogressive, but nevertheless discriminatory, purpose,’ but
those imagined facts are not present here.” Ibid. The Dis-
trict Court therefore left open the question that we had our-
selves left open on remand: namely, whether the § 5 purpose
inquiry extends beyond the search for retrogressive intent.
Second, the District Court considered, at greater length,
how any dilutive impact of the Board’s plan bore on the ques-
tion whether the Board enacted the plan with a retrogressive
intent. It concluded, applying the multifactor test we artic-
ulated in Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Devel-
opment Corp., 429 U. S. 252 (1977), that allegations of dilu-
tive effect and of discriminatory animus were insufficient to
establish retrogressive intent. 7 F. Supp. 2d, at 31–32.
In their jurisdictional statements in this Court, appel-
lants contended, first, that the District Court’s conclusion
that there was no evidence of discriminatory but nonretro-
gressive purpose was clearly erroneous, and second, that § 5
of the Voting Rights Act prohibits preclearance of a redis-
tricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but nonretro-
gressive purpose. Appellants did not challenge the District
Court’s determination that there was no evidence of retro-
gressive intent. We again noted probable jurisdiction. 525
U. S. 1118 (1999).

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II
Before proceeding to the merits, we must dispose of a chal-
lenge to our jurisdiction. The Board contends that these
cases are now moot, since its 1992 plan “will never again
be used for any purpose.” Motion to Dismiss or Affirm 9.
Under Louisiana law, school board members are elected
to serve 4-year terms. La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 17:52(A) (West
1995). One month after appellants filed the jurisdictional
statements for this appeal, the scheduled 1998 election for
the Board took place. The next scheduled election will not
occur until 2002, by which time, as appellants concede, the
data from the upcoming decennial census will be available
and the Board will be required by our “one-man-one-vote”
precedents to have a new apportionment plan in place. Ac-
cordingly, appellee argues, the District Court’s declaratory
judgment with respect to the 1992 plan is no longer of any
moment and the dispute no longer presents a live “case or
controversy” for purposes of Article III of the Constitution.
Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395, 401 (1975); Mills v. Green,
159 U. S. 651, 653 (1895).
Appellants posit several contingencies in which the
Board’s 1992 plan would be put to use—including resigna-
tion or death of one of the 12 Board members before 2002,
and failure to agree upon a replacement plan for the 2002
election. They also assert that, if we were to hold preclear-
ance improper, they “could seek” an injunction voiding the
elections held under the 1992 plan and ordering a special
election, Brief for Appellants Price et al. Opposing Motion
to Dismiss or Affirm 3, and “might be entitled” to such an
injunction, Brief for Appellant Reno in Opposition to Motion
to Dismiss or Affirm 2. We need not pause to consider
whether the possibility of these somewhat speculative and
uncertain events suffices to keep these cases alive, since in at
least one respect the 1992 plan will have probable continuing
effect: Absent a successful subsequent challenge under § 2, it,
rather than the 1980 predecessor plan—which contains quite

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different voting districts—will serve as the baseline against
which appellee’s next voting plan will be evaluated for the
purposes of preclearance. Whether (and precisely how) that
future plan represents a change from the baseline, and, if so,
whether it is retrogressive in effect, will depend on whether
preclearance of the 1992 plan was proper.
We turn, then, to the merits.
III
Appellants press the two claims initially raised in their
jurisdictional statements: first, that the District Court’s fac-
tual conclusion that there was no evidence of discrimina-
tory but nonretrogressive intent was clearly erroneous, and
second, that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits pre-
clearance of a redistricting plan enacted with a discrimi-
natory but nonretrogressive purpose. Our resolution of
the second claim renders it unnecessary to address the first.
When considered in light of our longstanding interpretation
of the “effect” prong of § 5 in its application to vote-dilution
claims, the language of § 5 leads to the conclusion that the
“purpose” prong of § 5 covers only retrogressive dilution.
As noted earlier, in order to obtain preclearance under § 5,
a covered jurisdiction must demonstrate that the proposed
change “does not have the purpose and will not have the
effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account
of race or color.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. A covered jurisdic-
tion, therefore, must make two distinct showings: first, that
the proposed change “does not have the purpose . . . of deny-
ing or abridging the right to vote on account of race or
color,” and second, that the proposed change “will not have
the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on ac-
count of race or color.” The covered jurisdiction bears the
burden of persuasion on both points. See Bossier Parish I,
520 U. S., at 478 ( judicial preclearance); 28 CFR § 51.52(a)
(1999) (administrative preclearance).

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In Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976), this Court
addressed the meaning of the no-effect requirement in the
context of an allegation of vote dilution. The case pre-
sented the question whether a reapportionment plan that
would have a discriminatory but nonretrogressive effect on
the rights of black voters should be denied preclearance.
Reasoning that § 5 must be read in light of its purpose of
“insur[ing] that no voting-procedure changes would be made
that would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial
minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the elec-
toral franchise,” we held that “a legislative reapportionment
that enhances the position of racial minorities with respect
to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise can
hardly have the ‘effect’ of diluting or abridging the right
to vote on account of race within the meaning of § 5.” Id.,
at 141. In other words, we concluded that, in the context
of a § 5 challenge, the phrase “denying or abridging the right
to vote on account of race or color”—or more specifically, in
the context of a vote-dilution claim, the phrase “abridging
the right to vote on account of race or color”—limited the
term it qualified, “effect,” to retrogressive effects.
Appellants contend that in qualifying the term “purpose,”
the very same phrase does not impose a limitation to retro-
gression—i. e., that the phrase “abridging the right to vote
on account of race or color” means retrogression when it
modifies “effect,” but means discrimination more generally
when it modifies “purpose.” We think this is simply an un-
tenable construction of the text, in effect recasting the
phrase “does not have the purpose and will not have the
effect of x” to read “does not have the purpose of y and will
not have the effect of x.” As we have in the past, we refuse
to adopt a construction that would attribute different mean-
ings to the same phrase in the same sentence, depending
on which object it is modifying. See BankAmerica Corp. v.
United States, 462 U. S. 122, 129 (1983) (declining to give

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330 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
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different meanings to the phrase “other than” when it modi-
fied “banks” and “common carriers” in the same clause).
Appellants point out that we did give the purpose prong
of § 5 a broader meaning than the effect prong in Richmond
v. United States, 422 U. S. 358 (1975). That case involved
requested preclearance for a proposed annexation that would
have reduced the black population of the city of Richmond,
Virginia, from 52% to 42%. We concluded that, although
the annexation may have had the effect of creating a political
unit with a lower percentage of blacks, so long as it “fairly
reflect[ed] the strength of the Negro community as it ex-
ist[ed] after the annexation” it did not violate § 5. Id., at
371. We reasoned that this interpretation of the effect
prong of § 5 was justified by the peculiar circumstances pre-
sented in annexation cases:
“To hold otherwise would be either to forbid all such
annexations or to require, as the price for approval of
the annexation, that the black community be assigned
the same proportion of council seats as before, hence
perhaps permanently overrepresenting them and under-
representing other elements in the community, including
the nonblack citizens in the annexed area. We are un-
willing to hold that Congress intended either conse-
quence in enacting § 5.” Ibid.
We refused, however, to impose a similar limitation on § 5’s
purpose prong, stating that preclearance could be denied
when the jurisdiction was acting with the purpose of effect-
ing a percentage reduction in the black population, even
though it could not be denied when the jurisdiction’s action
merely had that effect. Id., at 378–379.
It must be acknowledged that Richmond created a dis-
continuity between the effect and purpose prongs of § 5. We
regard that, however, as nothing more than an ex necessitate
limitation upon the effect prong in the particular context of
annexation—to avoid the invalidation of all annexations of

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areas with a lower proportion of minority voters than the
annexing unit. The case certainly does not stand for the
proposition that the purpose and effect prongs have fun-
damentally different meanings—the latter requiring retro-
gression, and the former not—which is what is urged here.
The approved effect of the redistricting in Richmond, and
the hypothetically disapproved purpose, were both retro-
gressive. We found it necessary to make an exception to
normal retrogressive-effect principles, but not to normal
retrogressive-purpose principles, in order to permit routine
annexation. That sheds little light upon the issue before
us here.
Appellants’ only textual justification for giving the pur-
pose and effect prongs different meanings is that to do
otherwise “would reduce the purpose prong of Section 5 to
a trivial matter,” Brief for Federal Appellant on Reargu-
ment 13; would “effectively delet[e] the ‘purpose’ prong,”
Reply Brief for Appellants Price et al. on Reargument 3;
and would give the purpose prong “a trivial reach, limited
to the case of the incompetent retrogressor,” Reply Brief
for Federal Appellant 9. If this were true—and if it were
adequate to justify giving the very same words a different
meaning when qualifying “purpose” than when qualifying
“effect”—one would expect appellants to cite at least some
instances in which this Court applied such muscular con-
struction to the innumerable statutes barring conduct with
a particular “purpose or effect.” See, e. g., 7 U. S. C. § 192(d)
(prohibiting sale of any article “for the purpose or with
the effect of manipulating or controlling prices” in the
meatpacking industry); 12 U. S. C. § 1467a(c)(1)(A) (barring
savings and loan holding companies from engaging in any
activity on behalf of a savings association subsidiary “for
the purpose or with the effect of evading any law or regula-
tion applicable to such savings association”); 47 U. S. C.
§ 541(b)(3)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. III) (prohibiting cable fran-
chising authorities from imposing any requirement that “has

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332 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
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the purpose or effect of prohibiting, limiting, restricting, or
conditioning the provision of a telecommunications service
by a cable operator or an affiliate thereof ”). They cite not
a single one, and we are aware of none.
It is true enough that, whenever Congress enacts a statute
that bars conduct having “the purpose or effect of x,” the
purpose prong has application entirely separate from that of
the effect prong only with regard to unlikely conduct that
has “the purpose of x” but fails to have “the effect of x”—
in the present context, the conduct of a so-called “incompe-
tent retrogressor.” The purpose prong has value and effect,
however, even when it does not cover additional conduct.
With regard to conduct that has both “the purpose of x” and
“the effect of x,” the Government need only prove that the
conduct at issue has “the purpose of x” in order to prevail.
In the specific context of § 5, where the covered jurisdiction
has the burden of persuasion, the Government need only re-
fute the covered jurisdiction’s prima facie showing that a
proposed voting change does not have a retrogressive pur-
pose in order for preclearance to be denied. When it can
do so, it is spared the necessity of countering the jurisdic-
tion’s evidence regarding actual retrogressive effect—which,
in vote-dilution cases, is often a complex undertaking. This
advantage, plus the ability to reach malevolent incompe-
tence, may not represent a massive addition to the effect
prong, but it is enough to justify the separate existence of
the purpose prong in this statute, and is no less than what
justifies the separate existence of such a provision in many
other laws.1
1 Justice Souter criticizes us for “assum[ing] that purpose is easier to
prove than effect . . . in voting rights cases.” Post, at 358, n. 10 (opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part). As is obvious from our discus-
sion in text, we do not suggest that purpose is always easier to prove, but
simply that it may sometimes be (which suffices to give force to the “pur-
pose” prong without the necessity of doing violence to the English lan-
guage). Indeed, Justice Souter acknowledges that “intent to dilute is
conceptually simple, whereas a dilutive abridgment-in-fact is not readily
defined and identified independently of dilutive intent.” Post, at 367.

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At bottom, appellants’ disagreement with our reading of
§ 5 rests not upon textual analysis, but upon their opposi-
tion to our holding in Beer. Although they do not explicitly
contend that Beer should be overruled, they all but do so
by arguing that it would be “untenable” to conclude (as we
did in Beer) that the phrase “abridging the right to vote on
account of race or color” refers only to retrogression in § 5,
Reply Brief for Federal Appellant on Reargument 1, in light
of the fact that virtually identical language elsewhere in the
Voting Rights Act—and indeed, in the Fifteenth Amend-
ment—has never been read to refer only to retrogression.
See § 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1973(a) (“No
voting [practice] shall be imposed or applied by any State
or political subdivision in a manner which results in a de-
nial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United
States to vote on account of race or color . . .”); U. S. Const.,
Amdt. 15, § 1 (“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 condi-
tion of servitude”).2 The term “abridge,” however—whose
2 Appellants also cite § 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act, which provides,
with regard to a court that has found a violation of the right to vote
guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment, that “the
court . . . shall retain jurisdiction for such period as it may deem ap-
propriate and during such period no voting [practice] different from that
in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be en-
forced unless and until the court finds that such [practice] does not have
the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right
to vote on account of race or color . . . .” 42 U. S. C. § 1973a(c). This
provision does not assist appellants’ case because it is not at all clear that
it confers the power to deny approval to nonretrogressive redistricting.
That is to say, it may well contemplate that, once a court has struck down
an unconstitutional practice and granted relief with regard to that prac-
tice, it may assume for that jurisdiction a function identical to that of the
District Court for the District of Columbia in § 5 preclearance proceedings.
This is suggested by the fact that the State may avoid the court’s jurisdic-
tion in this regard by obtaining preclearance from the Attorney General;
and that § 3(c), like § 5, explicitly leaves open the possibility that a pro-
posed change approved by the court can be challenged as unconstitutional

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334 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
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core meaning is “shorten,” see Webster’s New International
Dictionary 7 (2d ed. 1950); American Heritage Dictionary 6
(3d ed. 1992)—necessarily entails a comparison. It makes
no sense to suggest that a voting practice “abridges” the
right to vote without some baseline with which to com-
pare the practice. In § 5 preclearance proceedings—which
uniquely deal only and specifically with changes in voting
procedures—the baseline is the status quo that is proposed
to be changed: If the change “abridges the right to vote”
relative to the status quo, preclearance is denied, and the
status quo (however discriminatory it may be) remains in
effect. In § 2 or Fifteenth Amendment proceedings, by con-
trast, which involve not only changes but (much more com-
monly) the status quo itself, the comparison must be made
with a hypothetical alternative: If the status quo “re-
sults in [an] abridgement of the right to vote” or “abridge[s]
[the right to vote]” relative to what the right to vote ought
to be, the status quo itself must be changed. Our reading
of “abridging” as referring only to retrogression in § 5, but
to discrimination more generally in § 2 and the Fifteenth
Amendment, is faithful to the differing contexts in which the
term is used.3
in a “subsequent action.” Ibid. We of course intimate no holding on this
point, but limit our conclusion to the nonprobative character of § 3(c) with
regard to the issue in the present cases.
3 Even if § 5 did not have a different baseline than the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, appellants’ argument that § 5 should be read in parallel with the
Fifteenth Amendment would fail for the simple reason that we have
never held that vote dilution violates the Fifteenth Amendment. See
Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 159 (1993) (citing Beer v. United States,
425 U. S. 130, 142–143, n. 14 (1976)). Indeed, contrary to Justice Sou-
ter’s assertion, post, at 360, n. 11 (opinion concurring in part and dissent-
ing in part), we have never even “suggested” as much. Gomillion v.
Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960), involved a proposal to redraw the bound-
aries of Tuskegee, Alabama, so as to exclude all but 4 or 5 of its 400
black voters without excluding a single white voter. See id., at 341. Our
conclusion that the proposal would deny black voters the right to vote in
municipal elections, and therefore violated the Fifteenth Amendment, had
nothing to do with racial vote dilution, a concept that does not appear in

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In another argument that applies equally to our holding
in Beer, appellants object that our reading of § 5 would re-
quire the District Court or Attorney General to preclear
proposed voting changes with a discriminatory effect or
purpose, or even with both. That strikes appellants as an
inconceivable prospect only because they refuse to accept
the limited meaning that we have said preclearance has in
the vote-dilution context. It does not represent approval
of the voting change; it is nothing more than a determi-
nation that the voting change is no more dilutive than what
it replaces, and therefore cannot be stopped in advance
under the extraordinary burden-shifting procedures of § 5,
but must be attacked through the normal means of a § 2
action. As we have repeatedly noted, in vote-dilution cases
§ 5 prevents nothing but backsliding, and preclearance under
§ 5 affirms nothing but the absence of backsliding. Bossier
Parish I, 520 U. S., at 478; Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900,
926 (1995); Beer, 425 U. S., at 141.4 This explains why the
our voting-rights opinions until nine years later. See Allen v. State Bd.
of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 569 (1969). As for the other case relied upon
by Justice Souter, the plurality opinion in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S.
55 (1980), not only does that not suggest that the Fifteenth Amendment
covers vote dilution, it suggests the opposite, rejecting the appellees’
vote-dilution claim in the following terms: “The answer to the appellees’
argument is that . . . their freedom to vote has not been denied or abridged
by anyone. The Fifteenth Amendment does not entail the right to have
Negro candidates elected . . . . Having found that Negroes in Mobile
‘register and vote without hindrance,’ the District Court and Court of
Appeals were in error in believing that the appellants invaded the pro-
tection of that Amendment in the present case.” Id., at 65; see also
id., at 84, n. 3 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (characterizing plu-
rality opinion as concluding that “the Fifteenth Amendment applies only
to practices that directly affect access to the ballot”).
4 In search of support for the argument that § 5 prevents not just back-
sliding on vote dilution but all forms of vote dilution, Justice Souter
embarks upon a lengthy expedition into legislative history. Post, at 362–
367 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). He returns emp-
tyhanded, since he can point to nothing suggesting that the Congress
thought § 5 covered both retrogressive and nonretrogressive dilution.
Indeed, it is doubtful whether the Congress that passed the 1965 Voting

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sole consequence of failing to obtain preclearance is con-
tinuation of the status quo. To deny preclearance to a plan
that is not retrogressive—no matter how unconstitutional
it may be—would risk leaving in effect a status quo that is
even worse. For example, in the case of a voting change
with a discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose and a
discriminatory but ameliorative effect, the result of denying
preclearance would be to preserve a status quo with more
discriminatory effect than the proposed change.
In sum, by suggesting that § 5 extends to discriminatory
but nonretrogressive vote-dilutive purposes, appellants ask
us to do what we declined to do in Bossier Parish I: to
blur the distinction between § 2 and § 5 by “shift[ing] the
focus of § 5 from nonretrogression to vote dilution, and . . .
chang[ing] the § 5 benchmark from a jurisdiction’s existing
plan to a hypothetical, undiluted plan.” 520 U. S., at 480.
Such a reading would also exacerbate the “substantial”
federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already
exacts, Lopez v. Monterey County, 525 U. S. 266, 282 (1999),
perhaps to the extent of raising concerns about § 5’s con-
stitutionality, see Miller, supra, at 926–927. Most impor-
tantly, however, in light of our holding in Beer, appellants’
reading finds no support in the language of § 5.5
Rights Act even had the practice of racial vote dilution in mind. As Jus-
tice Souter acknowledges, this Court did not address the concept until
1969, see post, at 364, n. 13, and the legislative history of the 1969 exten-
sion of the Act, quoted by Justice Souter, see post, at 364–365, refers
to at-large elections and consolidation of counties as “new, unlawful ways
to diminish the Negroes’ franchise” developed since passage of the Act.
H. R. Rep. No. 91–397, pp. 6–7 (1969).
5 Justice Souter asserts that “[t]he Justice Department’s longstanding
practice of refusing to preclear changes that it determined to have an
unconstitutionally discriminatory purpose, both before and after Beer,” is
entitled to deference. Post, at 368 (opinion concurring in part and dis-
senting in part); accord, post, at 373 (Stevens, J., dissenting). But of
course before Beer the Justice Department took the position that even
the effects prong was not limited, in redistricting cases, to retrogression.
Indeed, that position had been the basis for its denial of preclearance in

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IV
Notwithstanding the fact that Bossier Parish I explicitly
“le[ft] open for another day” the question whether § 5 ex-
tends to discriminatory but nonretrogressive intent, see
520 U. S., at 486, appellants contend that two of this Court’s
prior decisions have already reached the conclusion that it
does. First, appellants note that, in Beer, this Court stated
that “an ameliorative new legislative apportionment cannot
violate § 5 unless the new apportionment itself so discrimi-
nates on the basis of race or color as to violate the Constitu-
tion.” 425 U. S., at 141. Appellants contend that this sug-
gests that, at least in some cases in which the covered
jurisdiction acts with a discriminatory but nonretrogressive
dilutive purpose, the covered jurisdiction should be denied
preclearance because it is acting unconstitutionally.
We think that a most implausible interpretation. At the
time Beer was decided, it had not been established that
discriminatory purpose as well as discriminatory effect was
necessary for a constitutional violation, compare White v.
Regester, 412 U. S. 755, 765–766 (1973), with Washington v.
Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 238–245 (1976). If the statement in
Beer had meant what appellants suggest, it would either
have been anticipating (without argument) that later hold-
ing, or else would have been gutting Beer’s holding (since
a showing of discriminatory but nonretrogressive effect
would have been a constitutional violation and would, de-
spite the holding of Beer, have sufficed to deny preclearance).
A much more plausible explanation of the statement is that
it referred to a constitutional violation other than vote dilu-
Beer, see 425 U. S., at 136, and was argued in its brief before us as the
basis for sustaining the District Court’s denial, see Brief for United States
in Beer v. United States, O. T. 1975, No. 73–1869, pp. 17–18. We rejected
that position as to the effects prong, and there is even more reason to
reject it in the present cases, whose outcomes depend as much upon the
implication of one of our prior cases (as to which we owe the Department
no deference) as upon a raw interpretation of the statute.

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338 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
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tion—and, more specifically, a violation consisting of a “de-
nial” of the right to vote, rather than an “abridgement.” Al-
though in the context of denial claims, no less than in the
context of abridgment claims, the antibacksliding rationale
for § 5 (and its effect of avoiding preservation of an even
worse status quo) suggests that retrogression should again
be the criterion, arguably in that context the word “deny”
(unlike the word “abridge”) does not import a comparison
with the status quo.6
In any event, it is entirely clear that the statement in
Beer was pure dictum: The Government had made no con-
tention that the proposed reapportionment at issue was
unconstitutional. 425 U. S., at 142, n. 14. And though we
have quoted the dictum in subsequent cases, we have never
actually applied it to deny preclearance. See Bossier
Parish I, supra, at 481; Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 912
(1996) (Shaw II); Miller, 515 U. S., at 924. We have made
clear, on the other hand, what we reaffirm today: that pro-
ceedings to preclear apportionment schemes and proceedings
to consider the constitutionality of apportionment schemes
are entirely distinct.
“Although the Court concluded that the redistrict-
ing scheme at issue in Beer was nonretrogressive, it
6 Justice Breyer suggests that “[i]t seems obvious . . . that if Missis-
sippi had enacted its ‘moral character’ requirement in 1966 (after enact-
ment of the Voting Rights Act), a court applying § 5 would have found ‘the
purpose . . . of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of
race,’ even if Mississippi had intended to permit, say, 0.4%, rather than
0.3%, of the black voting age population of Forrest County to register.”
Post, at 376 (dissenting opinion). As we note above, however, our hold-
ing today does not extend to violations consisting of an outright “denial”
of an individual’s right to vote, as opposed to an “abridgement” as in
dilution cases. In any event, if Mississippi had attempted to enact a
“moral character” requirement in 1966, it would have been precluded
from doing so under § 4, which bars certain types of voting tests and de-
vices altogether, and the issue of § 5 preclearance would therefore never
have arisen. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 1973b(a)(1), (c).

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did not hold that the plan, for that reason, was immune
from constitutional challenge. . . . Indeed, the Voting
Rights Act and our case law make clear that a reappor-
tionment plan that satisfies § 5 still may be enjoined
as unconstitutional.” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 654
(1993) (Shaw I) (emphasis added).
See also City of Lockhart v. United States, 460 U. S. 125,
134 (1983) (describing the holding of Beer as follows: “Al-
though the new plan may have remained discriminatory, it
nevertheless was not a regressive change. . . . Since the new
plan did not increase the degree of discrimination against
blacks, it was entitled to § 5 preclearance”); Allen v. State
Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 549–550 (1969) (“Once the
State has successfully complied with the § 5 approval
requirements, private parties may enjoin the enforcement
of the new enactment only in traditional suits attacking its
constitutionality . . .”). As we noted in Shaw I, § 5 explicitly
states that neither administrative nor judicial preclearance
“ ‘shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement’ of
[a change in voting practice].” 509 U. S., at 654 (quoting 42
U. S. C. § 1973c). That fully available remedy leaves us un-
troubled by the possibility that § 5 could produce preclear-
ance of an unconstitutionally dilutive redistricting plan.
Second, appellants contend that we denied preclearance
on the basis of a discriminatory but nonretrogressive pur-
pose in Pleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462 (1987).
That case involved an unusual fact pattern. The city of
Pleasant Grove, Alabama—which, at the time of the Dis-
trict Court’s decision, had 32 black inhabitants, none of
whom was registered to vote and of whose existence city
officials appear to have been unaware, id., at 465, n. 2—
sought to annex two parcels of land, one inhabited by a
few whites, and the other vacant but likely to be inhabited by
whites in the near future. We upheld the District Court’s
conclusion that the city acted with a discriminatory pur-
pose in annexing the land, rejecting the city’s contention

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340 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
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that it could not have done so because it was unaware of the
existence of any black voters against whom it could have
intended to discriminate:
“[The city’s] argument is based on the incorrect as-
sumption that an impermissible purpose under § 5 can
relate only to present circumstances. Section 5 looks
not only to the present effects of changes, but to their
future effects as well . . . . Likewise, an impermissible
purpose under § 5 may relate to anticipated as well as
present circumstances.
“It is quite plausible to see [the annexation] as mo-
tivated, in part, by the impermissible purpose of mini-
mizing future black voting strength. . . . This is just
as impermissible a purpose as the dilution of present
black voting strength.” Id., at 471–472 (citations and
footnotes omitted).
Appellants assert that we must have viewed the city’s
purpose as discriminatory but nonretrogressive because, as
the city noted in contending that it lacked even a dis-
criminatory purpose, the city could not have been acting to
worsen the voting strength of any present black residents,
since there were no black voters at the time. However, as
the above quoted passage suggests, we did not hold that the
purpose prong of § 5 extends beyond retrogression, but
rather held that a jurisdiction with no minority voters can
have a retrogressive purpose, at the present time, by in-
tending to worsen the voting strength of future minority
voters. Put another way, our holding in Pleasant Grove had
nothing to do with the question whether, to justify the de-
nial of preclearance on the basis of the purpose prong, the
purpose must be retrogressive; instead, it involved the
question whether the purpose must be to achieve retro-
gression at once or could include, in the case of a jurisdic-
tion with no present minority voters, retrogression with re-
gard to operation of the proposed plan (as compared with

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operation of the status quo) against new minority voters in
the future. Like the dictum from Beer, therefore, Pleasant
Grove is simply inapposite here.
* * *
In light of the language of § 5 and our prior holding in
Beer, we hold that § 5 does not prohibit preclearance of a
redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but non-
retrogressive purpose. Accordingly, the judgment of the
District Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Thomas, concurring.
The Bossier Parish School Board first sought preclearance
of the redistricting plan at issue in this litigation almost
seven years ago. The Justice Department and private ap-
pellants opposed that effort, arguing throughout this litiga-
tion that a “safe” majority-minority district is necessary to
ensure the election of a black school board member. Ironi-
cally, while this litigation was pending, three blacks were
elected from majority-white districts to serve on the Bossier
Parish School Board. Although these election results are
not part of the record, they vividly illustrate the fact that
the federal intervention that spawned this litigation was
unnecessary.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice
Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, concurring in part
and dissenting in part.
Under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U. S. C.
§ 1973c, a jurisdiction required to obtain preclearance of
changes to its voting laws must show that a proposed amend-
ment will not have the effect, and does not reflect a purpose,
to deny or abridge the vote on account of race. I respect-
fully dissent 1 from the Court’s holding that § 5 is indifferent
1 I agree with the Court’s conclusion on the matter of mootness.

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to a racially discriminatory purpose so long as a change in
voting law is not meant to diminish minority voting strength
below its existing level. It is true that today’s decision has
a precursor of sorts in Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130
(1976), which holds that the only anticipated redistricting
effect sufficient to bar preclearance is retrogression in mi-
nority voting strength, however dilutive of minority voting
power a redistricting plan may otherwise be. But if today’s
decision achieves a symmetry with Beer, the achievement is
merely one of well-matched error. The Court was mistaken
in Beer when it restricted the effect prong of § 5 to retrogres-
sion, and the Court is even more wrong today when it limits
the clear text of § 5 to the corresponding retrogressive pur-
pose. Although I adhere to the strong policy of respecting
precedent in statutory interpretation and so would not re-
examine Beer, that policy does not demand that recognized
error be compounded indefinitely, and the Court’s prior mis-
take about the meaning of the effects requirement of § 5
should not be expanded by an even more erroneous interpre-
tation of the scope of the section’s purpose prong.
The Court’s determination that Congress intended pre-
clearance of a plan not shown to be free of dilutive intent
(let alone a plan shown to be intentionally discriminatory)
is not, however, merely erroneous. It is also highly uncon-
vincing. The evidence in these very cases shows that the
Bossier Parish School Board (School Board or Board) acted
with intent to dilute the black vote, just as it acted with
that same intent through decades of resistance to a judicial
desegregation order. The record illustrates exactly the sort
of relentless bad faith on the part of majority-white voters in
covered jurisdictions that led to the enactment of § 5. The
evidence all but poses the question why Congress would ever
have meant to permit preclearance of such a plan, and it all
but invites the answer that Congress could hardly have in-
tended any such thing. While the evidence goes substan-
tially unnoticed on the Court’s narrow reading of the purpose

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prong of § 5, it is not only crucial to my resolution of these
cases, but insistent in the way it points up the implausibility
of the Court’s reading of purpose under § 5.
I
In Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Develop-
ment Corp., 429 U. S. 252 (1977), this Court set out a check-
list of considerations for assessing evidence going to dis-
criminatory intent: the historical background of a challenged
decision, its relative impact on minorities, specific antecedent
events, departures from normal procedures, and contempo-
rary statements of decisionmakers. Id., at 266–268. We
directed the District Court to follow that checklist in en-
quiring into discriminatory intent following remand in these
cases, Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 488
(1997) (Bossier Parish I). The Arlington Heights enquiry
reveals the following account of the School Board’s redis-
tricting activity and of the character of the parish in which
it occurred.
The parish’s institution of general governance is known
as the Police Jury, a board of representatives chosen from
districts within the parish. After the 1990 census showed
a numerical malapportionment among those districts, the
Police Jurors prepared a revised districting plan, which they
submitted to the Attorney General of the United States with
a request for the preclearance necessary under § 5 of the
Voting Rights Act before the parish, a covered jurisdiction,
could modify its voting district lines. Based on information
then available to the Department of Justice, the Attorney
General understood the parish to have shown that the new
plan would not have the effect and did not have the pur-
pose of abridging the voting rights of the parish’s 20% black
population, and the revised Police Jury plan received pre-
clearance in the summer of 1991. In fact, as the parish’s
School Board has now admitted, the Police Jury plan thus
approved dilutes the voting strength of the minority popula-

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tion, Plaintiff ’s Brief on Remand 12; that is, the plan discrim-
inates by abridging the rights of minority voters to partici-
pate in the political process and elect candidates of their
choice. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 46–47 (1986).
The same population shifts that required the Police Jury
to reapportion required the elected School Board to do the
same. Although the Board had approached the Police Jury
about the possibility of devising a joint plan of districts com-
mon to both Board and jury, the jury rebuffed the Board,
see App. to Juris. Statement 172a (Stipulations 83–84), and
the Board was forced to go it alone. History provides a
good indication of what might have been expected from this
endeavor.
As the parties have stipulated, the School Board had ap-
plied its energies for decades in an effort to “limit or evade”
its obligation to desegregate the parish schools. Id., at 216a
(Stipulation 237). When the Board first received a court
order to desegregate the parish’s schools in the mid-1960’s,
it responded with the flagrantly defiant tactics of that era,
see id., at 216a–217a (Stipulations 236–237), and the record
discloses the Board’s continuing obstructiveness down to the
time covered by these cases. During the 1980’s, the degree
of racial polarization in the makeup of the parish’s schools
rose, id., at 218a (Stipulations 241–243), and the dispropor-
tionate assignment of black faculty to predominantly black
schools increased, id., at 217a–218a (Stipulation 240). While
the parish’s superintendent testified that the assignment
of black faculty to predominantly black schools came in
response to black parents’ requests for positive black ex-
amples for their children, see App. 289, the black leaders who
testified in these cases uniformly rejected that claim and in-
sisted that, in accord with the parish’s desegregation decree,
black faculty were to be distributed throughout the parish’s
schools, to serve as models for white, as well as black, stu-
dents, see id., at 326–327; 2 Tr. 126–128.

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Other evidence of the Board’s intransigence on race cen-
ters on the particular terms of the integration decree that
since 1970 has required the Board to maintain a “Bi-Racial
Advisory Review Committee” made up of an equal number
of black and white members in order to “ ‘recommend to
the . . . Board ways to attain and maintain a unitary system
and to improve education in the parish.’ ” App. to Juris.
Statement in No. 98–405, p. 182a (Stipulation 111) (herein-
after App. to Juris. Statement). Although the Board rep-
resented to the District Court overseeing desegregation
that the committee was in place, see 2 Tr. 16 (testimony of
Superintendent William T. Lewis), the committee actually
met only two or three times in the mid-1970’s and then with
only its black members in attendance, see App. to Juris.
Statement 183a (Stipulation 112). In 1993, the Board set
up a short-lived “Community Affairs Committee” to replace
the “Bi-Racial Committee.” Despite the Board’s resolution
charging the committee “ ‘with the responsibility of in-
vestigating, consulting and advising the court and school
board periodically with respect to all matters pertinent to
the retention [sic] of a unitary school system,’ ” ibid. (Stipu-
lation 114), the Board disbanded the committee after only
three months because, as a leading Board member put it,
“ ‘the tone of the committee made up of the minority mem-
bers of the committee quickly turned toward becoming in-
volved in policy,’ ” id., at 184a (Stipulation 116). “Policy,”
however, was inevitably implicated by the committee’s pur-
pose, and the subjects of its recommendations (such as meth-
ods for more effective recruitment of black teachers and
their placement throughout the school system in accord with
the terms of the desegregation decree, see id., at 183a–184a
(Stipulation 115)) fell squarely within its mandate. It is
thus unsurprising that the Board has not achieved a unitary
school system and remains under court order to this day.
See id., at 217a (Stipulation 239); App. 139 (testimony of
S. P. Davis).

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About the time the Board appointed its “Community Af-
fairs Committee,” it sought preclearance under § 5 from the
Attorney General for the redistricting plan before us now.
The course of the Board’s redistricting efforts tell us much
about what it had in mind when it proposed its plan. Fol-
lowing the rebuff from the Police Jury, the Board was able
to follow a relaxed redistricting timetable, there being no
Board elections scheduled before 1994. While the Board
could simply have adopted the Police Jury plan once the At-
torney General had precleared it, the Board did not do so,
App. to Juris. Statement 147a (Stipulation 11), despite just
such a proposal from one Board member at the Board’s Sep-
tember 5, 1991, meeting. No action was then taken on the
proposal, id., at 174a (Stipulations 89–90), and although the
Board issued no explanation for its inaction, it is noteworthy
that the jury plan ignored some of the Board’s customary
districting concerns. Whereas one of those concerns was in-
cumbency protection, see App. 251; cf. App. to Juris. State-
ment 152a (Stipulation 26), the jury plan would have pitted
two pairs of incumbents against each other and created two
districts in which no incumbent resided, id., at 181a–182a
(Stipulation 109).2 The jury plan disregarded school attend-
ance zones, and even included two districts containing no
schools. Id., at 174a, 151a, 191a (Stipulations 88, 24, 141).
The jury plan, moreover, called for a total variation in dis-
trict populations exceeding the standard normally used to
gauge satisfaction of the “one person, one vote” principle, see
id., at 162a–163a (Stipulation 58); App. 231–232; 1 Tr. 147,
four of its districts failed the standard measure of compact-
ness used by the Board’s own cartographer, id., at 174–176,
2 While two of the incumbents were considering stepping down by the
time the Board subsequently adopted the plan, at least one of those de-
cisions was anything but firm. See App. 103; 4 Record, Doc. No. 72, in
Civ. Action No. 94–1495 (D. D. C.), pp. 60–61 ( joint designations of portions
of deposition of David Harvey); 1 Tr. 85.

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and one of its districts contained noncontiguous elements,
App. 234–235.
In addressing the need to devise a plan of its own, the
Board hired the same redistricting consultant who had
advised the Police Jury, Gary Joiner. Joiner and the Board
members (according to Joiner’s testimony) were perfectly
aware of their responsibility to avoid vote dilution in accord-
ance with the Voting Rights Act, see Record, Doc. No. 38
(direct testimony of Joiner 5), and he estimated that it would
take him between 200 to 250 hours to devise a plan for the
Board. The Board then spent nearly a year doing little in
public about redistricting, while its members met in pri-
vate with Joiner to consider alternatives. In March 1992,
George Price, president of the parish’s branch of the Na-
tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), wrote to the superintendent of parish schools
asking for a chance to play some role in the redistricting
process. App. 184. Although the superintendent passed
the letter on to the Board, the Board took no action, and
neither the superintendent nor the Board even responded
to Price’s request. App. to Juris. Statement 175a (Stipula-
tion 93). In August, Price wrote again, this time in concert
with a number of leaders of black community organizations,
again seeking an opportunity to express views about the
redistricting process, as well as about a number of Board
policies bearing on school desegregation. App. 187–189; see
also App. to Juris. Statement 175a (Stipulation 94). Once
again the Board made no response.
Being frustrated by the Board’s lack of responsiveness,
Price then asked for help from the national NAACP’s Re-
districting Project, which sent him a map showing how two
compact majority-black districts might be drawn in the
parish. Id., at 177a (Stipulation 98). When Price showed
the map to a school district official, he was told it was un-
acceptable because it failed to show all 12 districts. At
Price’s request, the Redistricting Project then provided a

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plan showing all 12 districts, which Price presented to the
Board at its September 3, 1992, meeting, explaining that it
showed the possibility of drawing majority-black districts.
Id., at 177a–178a (Stipulations 99–100). Several Board
members said they could not consider the NAACP plan
unless it was presented on a larger map, id., at 178a (Stipu-
lation 100), and both the Board’s cartographer and its legal
advisor, the parish district attorney, dismissed the plan out
of hand because it required precinct splits, id., at 179a (Stipu-
lation 102).
There is evidence that other implications of the NAACP
proposal were objectionable to the Board. According to one
black leader, Board member Henry Burns told him that
while he personally favored black representation on the
Board, a number of other Board members opposed the idea.3
App. 142. According to George Price, Board member Barry
Musgrove told him that the Board was hostile to the creation
of a majority-black district. Id., at 182.4
Although the NAACP plan received no further public con-
sideration, the pace of public redistricting activity suddenly
speeded up. At the Board’s September 17, 1992, meeting,
without asking Joiner to address the possibility of creating
any majority-black district, the Board abruptly passed a
statement of intent to adopt the Police Jury plan. App. to
Juris. Statement 179a–180a (Stipulation 106). At a public
3 One other Board member, Marguerite Hudson, when asked to ex-
plain why two of the schools in Plain Dealing, one of the parish’s towns,
were predominantly black, stated: “[T]hose people love to live in Plain
Dealing. . . . And most of them don’t want to get a big job, they would just
rather stay out there in the country, and stay on Welfare, and stay in Plain
Dealing.” App. 118.
4 Musgrove denied making the statement. See 1 Tr. 56. If, as the
District Court majority suggested, the significance of the latter statement
is uncertain, see Bossier Parish School Bd. v. Reno, 907 F. Supp. 434,
448 (DC 1995) (Bossier Parish I), it was tantamount to opposition to the
most obvious cure for the admitted dilution; there was in any event noth-
ing ambiguous about the Burns statement.

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hearing on the plan one week later, attended by an over-
flow crowd, a number of black voters spoke against the plan,
and Price presented the Board with a petition bearing over
500 signatures urging consideration of minority concerns.
No one spoke in favor of the plan, Bossier Parish I, 907
F. Supp. 434, 439 (DC 1995), and Price explained to the Board
that preclearance of the jury plan for use by the Police Jury
was no guarantee of preclearance of the same plan for the
Board. App. to Juris. Statement 180a–181a (Stipulation
108). Nonetheless, at its October 1 meeting, the voting
members of the Board unanimously adopted the Police Jury
plan, with one member absent and the Board’s only black
member (who had been appointed just two weeks earlier to
fill a vacancy) abstaining. Id., at 181a–182a (Stipulation
109). The Board did not submit the plan for preclearance
by the Attorney General until January 4, 1993. Id., at 182a
(Stipulation 110).
II
The significance of the record under § 5 is enhanced by
examining in more detail several matters already mentioned
as free from dispute, by testing some of the Board’s stated
reasons for refusing to consider any NAACP plan, and by
looking critically at the District Court’s reasons for resolving
disputed issues in the School Board’s favor.
A
The parties stipulate that for decades before this redis-
tricting the Board had sought to “limit or evade” its ob-
ligation to end segregation in its schools, an obligation
specifically imposed by Court order nearly 35 years ago and
not yet fulfilled. The Board has also conceded the discrimi-
natory impact of the Police Jury plan in falling “more heavily
on blacks than on whites,” Plaintiff ’s Brief on Remand in Civ.
Action No. 94–1495 (D. D. C.), p. 12, and in diluting “black
voting strength,” id., at 21. Even without the stipulated
history, the conceded dilution would be evidence of a corre-

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spondingly discriminatory intent. With the history, the im-
plication of intent speaks louder, and it grows more forceful
still after a closer look at two aspects of the dilutive impact
of the Police Jury plan.
First, the plan includes no majority-black districts even
though residential and voting patterns in Bossier Parish
meet the three conditions we identified in Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50–51, as opening the door to drawing
majority-minority districts to put minority voters on an
equal footing with others. The first Gingles condition is
that “the minority group must be able to demonstrate that
it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to con-
stitute a majority in a single-member district.” Id., at 50.
The Board does not dispute that black voters in Bossier Par-
ish satisfy this criterion. The Board joined in a stipulation
of the parties that in 1991, “it was obvious that a reasonably
compact black-majority district could be drawn within Bos-
sier City,” App. to Juris. Statement 154a–155a (Stipulation
36); see also 1 Tr. 60 (statement of Board member Barry
Musgrove), and that the NAACP plan demonstrated that two
such districts could have been drawn in the parish, see App.
to Juris. Statement 192a (Stipulation 143).5 As to the sec-
ond and third Gingles conditions, that the minority popula-
tion be politically cohesive and that the majority-white block
voting be enough to defeat the minority’s preferred candi-
date, see Gingles, supra, at 51, the Government introduced
expert testimony showing such polarization in Bossier Par-
ish’s voting patterns. See App. to Juris. Statement 201a–
5 While the cartographer hired by the Board stated during the re-
districting process that the parish’s black population was too dispersed
to draw a majority-black district, he later acknowledged that in fact
two such districts could be drawn, see App. to Juris. Statement 160a–
161a (Stipulations 52, 53), and not only the original NAACP plans but
also the Cooper Plans, two alternative plans developed by an expert for
the defendant-intervenors, demonstrated as much, see App. 238 (Cooper
Plans); App. to Juris. Statement 193a (Stipulation 147).

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207a (Stipulations 181–196); App. 163–173 (declaration of
Dr. Richard Engstrom). While acknowledging the some-
what limited data available for analysis, the expert concluded
that “African American voters are likely to have a realistic
opportunity to elect candidates of their choice to the . . .
Board only in districts in which they constitute a majority
of the voting age population.” Id., at 174.6
Second, the Police Jury plan diluted black votes by divid-
ing neighboring black communities with common interests
in and around at least two of the Parish’s municipalities,
thereby avoiding the creation of a majority-black district.7
See id., at 154–156 (declaration of George J. Castille III); id.,
at 141 (testimony of S. P. Davis). Even the Board’s own
cartographer conceded that one of these instances “ ‘ap-
pear[ed]’ ” to constitute “ ‘fracturing,’ ” App. to Juris. State-
ment 191a (Stipulation 138), which he defined as “divid[ing]
a ‘population that has a traditional cohesiveness, lives in the
same general area, [and] has a lot of commonalties’ . . . with
‘[the] intent to . . . fracture that population into adjoining
white districts,’ ” id., at 189a–190a (Stipulation 133).
6 The parties agreed that black candidates for other offices have been
able to win from majority-white districts in the parish, see id., at 201a
(Stipulation 180), but those instances all involved districts in which the
presence of an Air Force base, see id., at 206a–207a (Stipulation 196),
meant both that the effective percentage of black voters was considerably
higher than the raw figures suggested and, in the view of all the successful
black candidates, that the degree of hostility to black candidates among
white voters was lower than in the rest of the parish, see App. 131–132
(statement of Jeff Darby), 133–134 (statement of Jerome Darby), 143–144
(statement of Johnny Gipson).
7 Counsel for the Board suggested in cross-examining one of the Gov-
ernment’s experts that one of the instances of dividing black commu-
nities arose from a state-law prohibition on the Board’s “split[ting] existing
corporate lines.” 2 Tr. 189. He offered no authority for that proposition.
But in any case, the example the expert gave did not involve dividing a
municipality, but including in a single district areas both within the mu-
nicipality and outside it.

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B
The Board’s cartographer and lawyer objected that the
NAACP plan was unacceptable because it split precincts in
violation of state law. And yet the Board concedes that
school boards were free to seek precinct changes from the
police juries of their parishes, as they often successfully did.
See id., at 150a–151a (Stipulations 22–23). One of the Gov-
ernment’s experts, see App. 214, 217, 354, and the Board’s
own cartographic consultant, see App. to Juris. Statement
151a (Stipulation 23), acknowledged this practice. Indeed,
the parties agree that Joiner advised the Board about the
option of going to the Police Jury for precinct changes, see
id., at 174a (Stipulation 89); see also id., at 179a (Stipulation
102), but that the Board never asked him to pursue that pos-
sibility, see id., at 188a (Stipulation 128).8 Judge Kessler in
the District Court was therefore surely correct that the
Board’s claimed inability to divide precincts was no genuine
obstacle to a plan with a majority-black district. See Bos-
sier Parish I, 907 F. Supp., at 460–461 (opinion concurring in
part and dissenting in part).
8 The District Court majority stated that it was not merely the fact
that the NAACP plan required precinct splits, but that it required a large
number of splits that made it unappealing. This claim is untenable for
several reasons. First, again it assumes that the act to be explained is
the rejection of the NAACP plan rather than the adoption of the Police
Jury plan. While the NAACP plan required 46 precinct splits, see App.
to Juris. Statement 194a–195a (Stipulation 151), the Cooper II plan,
which also included two majority-black districts meeting traditional dis-
tricting criteria, required only 27, ibid., and the establishment of a single
majority-black district would have required just 14, see App. 269–270, 277.
Second, and more importantly, the Board’s cartographer and lawyer stated
that they told the Board the NAACP plan was unacceptable because it
split any precincts at all, not because it split lots of them, see App. to
Juris. Statement 179a (Stipulation 102), and a leading supporter of the
Police Jury plan on the Board, see 1 Tr. 129, and the Board’s interim black
member at the time of redistricting, see App. 130, agree on that score.

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It becomes all the clearer that the prospect of splitting
precincts was no genuine reason to reject the NAACP plan
(or otherwise to refuse to consider creating any majority-
black districts) when one realizes that from early on in the
Board’s redistricting process it gave serious thought to
adopting a plan that would have required just such pre-
cinct splits. When the Board hired Joiner as its cartogra-
pher in May 1991, his estimate of 200 to 250 hours to pre-
pare a plan for the Board, see App. to Juris. Statement 173a
(Stipulation 86), indicated that there was no intent simply to
borrow the recently devised Police Jury plan or to build on
the precincts established by the Police Jury, a possibility that
Joiner thought could be explored in “[s]everal hours at least,”
App. 271. It seems obvious that from the start the Board
expected its plan to require precinct splitting, and Joiner
acknowledged in his testimony that any plan “as strong as”
the Police Jury plan in terms of traditional districting cri-
teria would require precinct splits. Ibid. Splitting pre-
cincts only became an insuperable obstacle once the NAACP
made its proposal to create majority-black districts.
C
1
Despite its stated view that the record would not sup-
port a conclusion of nonretrogressive discriminatory intent,
the District Court majority listed a series of “allegedly dilu-
tive impacts” said to point to discriminatory intent: “[t]hat
some of the new districts have no schools, that the plan
ignores attendance boundaries, that it does not respect com-
munities of interest, that there is one outlandishly large
district, that several of them are not compact, that there is
a lack of contiguity, and that the population deviations re-
sulting from the jury plan are greater than the limits (± 5%)
imposed by Louisiana law.” 7 F. Supp. 2d 29, 32 (DC 1998)
(Bossier Parish II). The District Court found this evidence

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“too theoretical, and too attenuated,” to be probative of
retrogressive intent in the absence of corroborating evi-
dence of a “deliberate attempt.” Ibid. But whatever the
force of such evidence may be on the issue of intent to cause
retrogression, there is nothing “theoretical” or “attenuated”
in its significance as showing intent to dilute generally.
2
If we take the District Court opinions in Bossier Parish
I and Bossier Parish II together and treat the court’s § 5
discussions as covering nonretrogressive discriminatory in-
tent, it is clear that the court rested on two reasons for
finding that the plan’s dilutive effect could not support an
inference of nonretrogressive discriminatory intent. First,
the court thought any such inference inconsistent with the
view expressed in Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 924
(1995), that a refusal to adopt a plan to maximize the number
of majority-minority districts is insufficient alone to support
an inference of intentional discrimination. Miller is not on
point, however. In Miller, Georgia had already adopted a
plan that clearly improved the position of minority voters
by establishing two majority-black districts. The question
was simply whether the State’s refusal to create a third
betrayed discriminatory intent. Id., at 906–908, 923–924.
In these cases, the issue of inferred intent did not arise
upon rejection of a plan maximizing the number of majority-
black districts after a concededly ameliorative plan had
already been adopted; the issue arose on the Board’s refusal
to consider a plan with any majority-black districts when
more than one such district was possible under Gingles.
The issue here is not whether Bossier Parish betrayed a
discriminatory purpose in refusing to create the maximum
number of majority-black districts, see Bossier Parish II,
supra, at 33 (Silberman, J., concurring), but simply whether
it was significant that the parish refused to consider creating
a majority-black district at all. The refusal points to a dis-

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criminatory intent that the refusal to maximize in Miller v.
Johnson did not show.
The District Court’s second ground for discounting the
evidence of intent inherent in the Police Jury plan’s dilutive
effect was its finding that the Board had legitimate, nondis-
criminatory reasons for approving the plan. The evidence,
however, is powerful in showing that the Board had no
such reasons. As I have already noted, the Board’s respect
for existing precinct lines was apparently pretextual. The
other supposedly legitimate reason for the Board’s choice,
that the Police Jury was a safe harbor under § 5, is equally
unlikely. If the Police Jury plan was a safe harbor, it had
been safe from the day the Attorney General precleared it
for the Police Jury, whereas the Board ignored it for more
than a year after that preclearance. Interest in the Police
Jury plan developed only after pressure from Price and the
NAACP had intensified to the point that the redistricting
process would have to be concluded promptly if the minority
proposals were not to be considered. The Police Jury, there-
fore, became an attractive harbor only when it seemed to
offer safety from demands for a fair reflection of minority
voting strength. It was chosen by a Board, described by
the District Court majority as possessing a “tenacious deter-
mination to maintain the status quo,” Bossier Parish II,
supra, at 32, and the only fair inference is that when the
Board suddenly embraced the Police Jury plan it was run-
ning true to form.9
9 My conclusion indicates my disagreement with Justice Thomas’s con-
curring opinion. The factual predicate for raising and resolving the issue
of the scope of discriminatory intent relevant under § 5 is a subject of the
Board’s obligation to produce evidence and the District Court’s obligation
to make findings, and nothing in the conduct of the Justice Department
has impeded either the Board or the court from addressing this eviden-
tiary issue. The fact that black members have been elected to the Board
is outside the record and is no more before us than evidence showing the
extent to which the particular members were the choices of the minority
voters who have suffered the conceded dilution.

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D
In sum, for decades the School Board manifested sedulous
resistance to the constitutional obligation to desegregate
parish schools, which have never attained unitary status and
are still subject to court order. When faced with the need
to act alone in redrawing its voting districts, the Board
showed no interest in the Police Jury plan, which made no
sense for school purposes and was at odds with normal dis-
tricting principles applied by the Board. The Board hired
a cartographer in anticipation of drawing district lines sig-
nificantly different from the Police Jury lines, and the Attor-
ney General’s preclearance of the Police Jury plan for the
jury’s use produced no apparent Board interest in adopt-
ing that same plan. When minority leaders sought a role in
proposing a plan, the Board ignored them and when they
produced concrete proposals prepared by the NAACP, the
Board sidestepped with successive technical reasons cul-
minating in a patently pretextual objection. It was only
then, as its pretexts for resisting the NAACP were wear-
ing thin, that the Board evidently scrapped its intention to
obtain an original plan tailored to school district concerns
and acted with unwonted haste on the year-old proposal to
adopt the manifestly unsuitable Police Jury plan. The pro-
posal received no public hearing support and nothing but
objection from minority voters, who pointed out what the
Board now agrees, that the Police Jury plan dilutes minority
voting strength. The objections were unavailing and the
Board adopted the dilutive plan.
There is no reasonable doubt on this record that the Board
chose the Police Jury plan for no other reason than to squelch
requests to adopt the NAACP plan or any other plan reflect-
ing minority voting strength, and it would be incredible to
suggest that the resulting submergence of the minority vot-
ers was unintended by the Board whose own expert testified
that it understood the illegality of dilution. If, as I conclude
below, see Part III, infra, dilutive but nonretrogressive in-

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tent behind a redistricting plan disqualifies it from § 5 pre-
clearance, then preclearance is impossible on this record.
Since the burden to negate such intent (like the burden to
negate retrogressive intent and effect) rests on the voting
district asking for preclearance, nothing more is required to
show the impossibility of preclearance. See, e. g., Pleasant
Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462, 469 (1987). It is worth
noting, however, that the parish should likewise lose even
if we assume, as the District Court majority seems to have
done at one point, that the burden to show disqualifying in-
tent is on the Government and the intervenors. Bossier
Parish II, 7 F. Supp. 2d, at 31 (“We can imagine a set of facts
that would establish a ‘non-retrogressive, but nevertheless
discriminatory purpose,’ but those imagined facts are not
present here”). It is not only that Judge Kessler was cor-
rect in her conclusion that dilutive but nonretrogressive in-
tent was shown; the contrary view of the District Court ma-
jority raises “ ‘the definite and firm conviction that a mistake
[has] been committed,’ ” Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal.,
Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern
Cal., 508 U. S. 602, 622 (1993) (quoting United States v.
United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364, 395 (1948)). Re-
gardless of the burden of persuasion, therefore, the parish
should lose under the intent prong of § 5, if the purpose that
disqualifies under § 5 includes an intent to dilute minority
voting strength regardless of retrogression.
III
A
The legal issue here is the meaning of “abridging” in
the provision of § 5 that preclearance of a districting change
in a covered jurisdiction requires a showing that the new
plan does not “have the purpose . . . of denying or abridging
the right to vote on account of race or color . . . .” The
language tracks that of the Fifteenth Amendment’s guar-
antee that “[t]he right of citizens . . . to vote shall not be

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denied or abridged . . . on account of race [or] color . . . .”
Since the Act is an exercise of congressional power under § 2
of that Amendment, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S.
301, 325–327 (1966), the choice to follow the Amendment’s
terminology is most naturally read as carrying the meaning
of the constitutional terms into the statute. United States
v. Kozminski, 487 U. S. 931, 945 (1988) (“By employing the
constitutional language, Congress apparently was focusing
on the prohibition of comparable conditions”); cf. Morissette
v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952) (“[W]here Con-
gress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the
legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it pre-
sumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were
attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from
which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to
the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed”). Any con-
struction of the statute, therefore, carries an implication
about the meaning of the Amendment, absent some good rea-
son to treat the parallel texts differently on some particular
point, and a reading of the statute that would not fit the
Constitution is presumptively wrong.10
10 The majority argues that we should construe purpose and effect uni-
formly, as we would in laws regulating price discrimination, savings and
loans, and cable franchises. See ante, at 331–332. I find the Fifteenth
Amendment more relevant in interpreting § 5; the constitutional language
provides a reason to give purpose its full breadth. The majority also
claims that its reading leaves the purpose prong with some meaning be-
cause the Government need only refute a jurisdiction’s claim that a change
lacks retrogressive purpose in order to deny preclearance, without coun-
tering the jurisdiction’s evidence regarding actual retrogressive effect.
Ante, at 332. This assumes that purpose is easier to prove than effect.
While that may be true in price-fixing cases, it is not true in voting rights
cases (even though purpose is conceptually simpler than effect under § 5,
see infra, at 367–368). Here, as in many other race discrimination cases,
the parties agreed about the effects of the proposed changes while hotly
disputing the reasons for them. The majority limits the purpose prong
to the few cases in which attempted retrogression fails of its goal, a rather

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In each context, it is clear that abridgment necessarily
means something more subtle and less drastic than the com-
plete denial of the right to cast a ballot, denial being sepa-
rately forbidden. Abridgment therefore must be a condition
in between complete denial, on the one hand, and complete
enjoyment of voting power, on the other. The principal con-
cept of diminished voting strength recognized as actionable
under our cases is vote dilution, defined as a regime that
denies to minority voters the same opportunity to participate
in the political process and to elect representatives of their
choice that majority voters enjoy. See, e. g., Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U. S., at 46–47; 42 U. S. C. § 1973. The bench-
mark of dilution pure and simple is thus a system in which
every minority voter has as good a chance at political par-
ticipation and voting effectiveness as any other voter. Our
cases have also recognized retrogression as a subspecies of
dilution, the consequence of a scheme that not only gives a
minority voter a lesser practical chance to participate and
elect than a majority voter enjoys, but even reduces the mi-
nority voter’s practical power from what a preceding scheme
of electoral law provided. See Beer v. United States, 425
U. S., at 141. Although our cases have dealt with vote dilu-
tion only under the Fourteenth Amendment, see, e. g., Shaw
v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 645 (1993), I know of no reason in
text or history that dilution is not equally violative of the
Fifteenth Amendment guarantee against abridgment. And
while there has been serious dispute in the past over the
Fourteenth Amendment’s coverage of voting rights, see, e. g.,
Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U. S. 112, 154 (1970) (Harlan, J., con-
curring in part and dissenting in part), I know of no reason
to doubt that “abridg[e]” in the Fifteenth Amendment in-
cludes dilutive discrimination. See Bossier Parish I, 520
paltry coverage given that it is discriminatory purpose, not discriminatory
effect, that is at the heart of the Fifteenth Amendment.

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U. S., at 494–495 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and concur-
ring in judgment).11
The Court has never held (save in Beer) that the concept
of voting abridgment covers only retrogressive dilution, and
any such reading of the Fifteenth Amendment would be out-
landish. The Amendment contains no textual limitation on
abridgment, and when it was adopted, the newly emanci-
pated citizens would have obtained practically nothing from
a mere guarantee that their electoral power would not be
further reduced. Since § 5 of the Act is likewise free of any
11 We have suggested, but have never explicitly decided, that the Fif-
teenth Amendment applies to dilution claims. See Mobile v. Bolden, 446
U. S. 55, 62–63 (1980) (plurality opinion); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364
U. S. 339, 346 (1960) (singling out racial minority for discriminatory treat-
ment in voting violates Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits municipal
boundaries drawn to exclude blacks). But see Mobile, supra, at 84, n. 3
(Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (suggesting that Mobile plurality
said that Fifteenth Amendment does not reach vote dilution); Voinovich
v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 159 (1993) (reserving the question); Shaw v. Reno,
509 U. S. 630, 645 (1993) (endorsing the practice of considering dilution
claims under the Fourteenth Amendment); Beer v. United States, 425 U. S.
130, 142, n. 14 (1976).
The majority claims that Gomillion was not about dilution because it
involved the exclusion of black voters from municipal elections. Ante, at
334–335, n. 3. The voters excluded from the gerrymandered Tuskegee
were left in unincorporated areas, where they could, at most, vote for
county and state officials. Changing political boundaries to affect minor-
ity voting power would be called dilution today. Gomillion shows that
the physical image evoked by the term “dilution” does not encompass all
the ways in which participation in the political process can be made un-
equal. That the Court did not use the word “dilution” in its modern sense
in Gomillion does not diminish the force of its Fifteenth Amendment
analysis.
The majority also suggests, ante, at 334–335, n. 3, that the Mobile plu-
rality explicitly rejected reliance on the Fifteenth Amendment. But the
same plurality recognized that “ ‘deny or abridge’ ” in § 2 of the Voting
Rights Act mirrored the cognate language of the Fifteenth Amendment,
Mobile, supra, at 60–61, and we have since held that the language of § 2
includes nonretrogressive dilution claims. See, e. g., Voinovich v. Quilter,
supra, at 157.

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language qualifying or limiting the terms of abridgment
which it shares with the Amendment, abridgment under
§ 5 presumably covers any vote dilution, not retrogression
alone, and no redistricting scheme should receive preclear-
ance without a showing that it is nondilutive. See Bossier
Parish I, supra, at 493 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and
concurring in judgment) (use in § 5 of Fifteenth Amendment
language indicates that § 5 prohibits new plans with dilutive
purposes). Such, in fact, was apparently just what Congress
had in mind when it addressed § 5 to the agility of covered
jurisdictions in keeping one step ahead of dilution challenges
under the Constitution (and previous versions of the Voting
Rights Act) by adopting successive voting schemes, each
with a distinctive feature that perpetuated the abridgment
of the minority vote:
“Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was
inadequate to combat widespread and persistent dis-
crimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount
of time and energy required to overcome the obstruc-
tionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits.
After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance
to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well de-
cide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the
perpetrators of the evil to its victims.” South Carolina
v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 328 (footnote omitted).
This evil in Congress’s sights was discrimination, abridg-
ment of the right to vote, not merely discrimination that
happens to cause retrogression, and Congress’s intent to
frustrate the unconstitutional evil by barring a replace-
ment scheme of discrimination from being put into effect was
not confined to any one subset of discriminatory schemes.
The School Board’s purpose thus seems to lie at the very
center of what Congress meant to counter by requiring pre-
clearance, and the Court’s holding that any nonretrogressive
purpose survives § 5 is an exceedingly odd conclusion.

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B
The majority purports to shoulder its burden to justify
a limited reading of “abridging” by offering an argument
from the “context” of § 5. Since § 5 covers only changes in
voting practices, this fact is said to be a reason to think
that “abridging” as used in the statute is narrower than its
cognate in the Fifteenth Amendment, which covers both
changes and continuing systems. Ante, at 329–330, 333–334.
In other words, on the majority’s reading, the baseline in a
§ 5 challenge is the status quo that is to be changed, while
the baseline in a Fifteenth Amendment challenge (or one
under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act) is a nondiscriminatory
regime, whether extant or not. From the fact that § 5
applies only when a voting change is proposed, however, it
does not follow that the baseline of abridgment is the status
quo; Congress could perfectly well have decided that when a
jurisdiction is forced to change its voting scheme (because of
malapportionment shown by a new census, say), it ought to
show that the replacement is constitutional. This, of course,
is just what the unqualified language and its Fifteenth
Amendment parallel would suggest.
In fact, the majority’s principal reason for reading intent
to abridge as covering only intent to cause retrogression is
not the peculiar context of changes in the law, but Beer v.
United States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976), which limited the sort
of “effect” that would be an abridgment to retrogressive
effect. The strength of the majority’s position, then, de-
pends on the need for parallel limitations on the purpose
and effect prongs of § 5. The need, however, is very much
to the contrary.
1
Insofar as Beer is authority for defining the “effect” of a
redistricting plan that would bar preclearance under § 5,
I will of course respect it as precedent. The policy of stare
decisis is at its most powerful in statutory interpretation

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(which Congress is always free to supersede with new legis-
lation), see Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways
Comm’n, 502 U. S. 197, 202 (1991), and § 5 presents no ex-
ception to the rule that when statutory language is con-
strued it should stay construed. But it is another thing
entirely to ignore error in extending discredited reasoning
to previously unspoiled statutory provisions. That, how-
ever, is just what the Court does in extending Beer from § 5
effects to § 5 purpose.
Beer was wrongly decided, and its error should not be com-
pounded in derogation of clear text and equally clear con-
gressional purpose. The provision in § 5 barring preclear-
ance of a districting plan portending an abridging effect is
unconditional (and just as uncompromising as the bar to
plans resting on a purpose to abridge). The Beer Court
nonetheless sought to justify the imposition of a nontextual
limitation on the forbidden abridging effect to retrogression
by relying on a single fragment of legislative history, a state-
ment from a House Report that § 5 would prevent covered
jurisdictions from “ ‘undo[ing] or defeat[ing] the rights re-
cently won’ ” by blacks. Beer, supra, at 140 (quoting H. R.
Rep. No. 91–397, p. 8 (1969)).12 Relying on this one state-
ment, however, was an act of distorting selectivity, for the
legislative history is replete with references to the need to
block changes in voting practices that would perpetuate ex-
isting discrimination and stand in the way of truly nondis-
criminatory alternatives. In the House of Representatives,
the Judiciary Committee noted that “even after apparent de-
feat[s] resisters seek new ways and means of discriminating.
12 Section 5 was promulgated by the 89th Congress, but Congress’s
attention has repeatedly returned to it as the duration of the Voting
Rights Act has been extended and the Act has been amended. See, e. g.,
Bossier Parish I, 520 U. S. 471, 505–506 (1997) (Stevens, J., dissenting in
part and concurring in part) (discussing 1982 amendments); Voting Rights
Act of 1965, Amendments of 1975, 89 Stat. 400; Voting Rights Act Amend-
ments of 1970, 84 Stat. 315.

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Barring one contrivance too often has caused no change in
result, only in methods,” H. R. Rep. No. 439, 89th Cong.,
1st Sess., 10 (1965), and the House Report described how
jurisdictions had used changes in voting practices to stave
off reform. By making trifling changes in registration re-
quirements, for example, Dallas County, Alabama, was able
to terminate litigation against it without registering more
than a handful of minority voters, see id., at 10–11, and new
practices were similarly effective devices for perpetuating
discrimination in other jurisdictions as well, see S. Rep.
No. 162, pt. 3, pp. 8–9 (1965) (Joint Statement of Individual
Views by Sens. Dodd, Hart, Long, Kennedy, Bayh, Burdick,
Tydings, Dirksen, Hruska, Fong, Scott, and Javits). After
losing voting rights cases, jurisdictions would adopt new vot-
ing requirements “ ‘as a means for continuing the rejection
of qualified Negro applicants.’ ” Id., at 12 (quoting United
States v. Parker, 236 F. Supp. 511, 517 (MD Ala. 1964)).
Thanks to the discriminatory traditions of the jurisdictions
covered by § 5, these new practices often avoided retrogres-
sion 13 even as they stymied improvements. In the days
before § 5, the ongoing litigation would become moot and
minority litigants would be back at square one, shouldering
the burden of new challenges with the prospect of fur-
ther dodges to come. Beer, supra, at 152, n. 9 (Marshall, J.,
dissenting).
The intent of Congress to address the frustration of
running to stay in place was manifest when it extended the
Voting Rights Act in 1969:
“Prior to the enactment of the 1965 act, new voting
rules of various kinds were resorted to in several States
in order to perpetuate discrimination in the face of
13 The legislative history did not use the terms “retrogression” and
“dilution” to describe discriminatory regimes. In the Voting Rights Act
context, the former appears for the first time in a federal case in Beer,
425 U. S., at 141; the latter made its first appearance in Allen v. State Bd.
of Elections, 393 U. S. 544 (1969).

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adverse Federal court decrees and enactments by the
Congress. . . . In order to preclude such future State
or local circumvention of the remedies and policies of
the 1965 act, [§ 5 was enacted]. . . .
“The record before the committee indicates that as
Negro voter registration has increased under the Voting
Rights Act, several jurisdictions have undertaken new,
unlawful ways to diminish the Negroes’ franchise and
to defeat Negro and Negro-supported candidates. The
U. S. Commission on Civil Rights has reported that
these measures have taken the form of switching to
at-large elections where Negro voting strength is con-
centrated in particular election districts and facili-
tating the consolidation of predominently [sic] Negro
and predominently [sic] white counties. Other changes
in rules or practices affecting voting have included in-
creasing filing fees in elections where Negro candidates
were running; abolishing or making appointive offices
sought by Negro candidates; extending the term of office
of incumbent white officials, and withholding informa-
tion about qualifying for office from Negro candidates.”
H. R. Rep. No. 91–397, at 6–7.
See also 115 Cong. Rec. 38486 (1969) (remarks of Rep. Mc-
Culloch) (listing “new methods by which the South achieves
an old goal” of maintaining white control of the political
process).
Congress again expressed its views in 1975:
“In recent years the importance of [§ 5] has become
widely recognized as a means of promoting and preserv-
ing minority political gains in covered jurisdictions. . . .
. . . . .
“. . . As registration and voting of minority citizens
increases, other measures may be resorted to which
would dilute increasing minority voting strength. Such
other measures may include switching to at-large elec-

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tions, annexations of predominantly white areas, or the
adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans.” S. Rep.
No. 94–295, pp. 15–17 (citation omitted).
Congress thus referred to § 5 as a way to make the situation
better (“promoting”), not merely as a stopgap to keep it from
getting worse (“preserving”).
It is all the more difficult to understand how the majority
in Beer could have been so oblivious to this clear congres-
sional objective, when a decade before Beer the Court had
realized that modifying legal requirements was the way dis-
criminatory jurisdictions stayed one jump ahead of the Con-
stitution. In United States v. Mississippi, 380 U. S. 128
(1965), the Court described a series of ingenious devices
preventing minority registration, and in South Carolina v.
Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966), the Court said that
“Congress knew that some of the States . . . had resorted
to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules
of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating
voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal
court decrees. Congress had reason to suppose that
these States might try similar maneuvers in the future
in order to evade the remedies for voting discrimina-
tion contained in the Act itself.” Id., at 335 (footnote
omitted); see also id., at 314–315.
Likewise, well before Beer, our nascent dilution jurispru-
dence addressed practices mentioned in the congressional
lists of tactics targeted by § 5. See, e. g., White v. Regester,
412 U. S. 755, 765–766, 768–769 (1973).
In fine, the full legislative history shows beyond any doubt
just what the unqualified text of § 5 provides. The statute
contains no reservation in favor of customary abridgment
grown familiar after years of relentless discrimination, and
the preclearance requirement was not enacted to authorize
covered jurisdictions to pour old poison into new bottles.
See post, at 374–376 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Beer was

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wrong, and while it is entitled to stand under our traditional
stare decisis in statutory interpretation, stare decisis does
not excuse today’s decision to compound Beer’s error. 14
2
Giving purpose-to-abridge the broader, intended reading
while preserving the erroneously truncated interpretation of
effect would not even result in a facially irrational scheme.
This is so because intent to dilute is conceptually simple,
whereas a dilutive abridgment-in-fact is not readily defined
and identified independently of dilutive intent. A purpose
to dilute simply means to subordinate minority voting power;
exact calibration is unnecessary to identify what is intended.
Any purpose to give less weight to minority participation in
the electoral process than to majority participation is a pur-
pose to discriminate and thus to “abridge” the right to vote.
No further baseline is needed because the enquiry goes to
the direction of the majority’s aim, without reference to
details of the existing system.
Dilutive effect, for the reason the majority points out, is
different. Dilutive effect requires a baseline against which
to compare a proposed change. While the baseline is in
theory the electoral effectiveness of majority voters, dilution
is not merely a lack of proportional representation, see Davis
v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109, 131 (1986) (opinion of White, J.),
and we have held that the maximum number of possible
majority-minority districts cannot be the standard, see, e. g.,
Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S., at 925–926. Thus we have
held that an enquiry into dilutive effect must rest on some
14 The Court says this “lengthy expedition into legislative history”
leaves me “emptyhanded” for the reason that nothing shows that today’s
notions of vote dilution were particularly in the congressional mind.
Ante, at 335, n. 4. But the whole point of the legislative history is that
Congress meant to guard against just those discriminatory devices that
were as yet untried. Congress did not know what the covered jurisdic-
tions would think up next.

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idea of a reasonable allocation of power between minority
and majority voters; this requires a court to compare a
challenged voting practice with a reasonable alternative
practice. See Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 880 (1994) (opin-
ion of Kennedy, J.); id., at 887–888 (O’Connor, J., concur-
ring in part and concurring in judgment); see also Johnson
v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1018 (1994). Looking only to
retrogression in effect, while looking to any dilutive or other
abridgment in purpose, avoids the difficulty of baseline deri-
vation. The distinction was not intended by Congress, but
such a distinction is not irrational.
Indeed, the Justice Department has always taken the
position that Beer is limited to the effect prong and puts
no limitation on discriminatory purpose in § 5. See Brief
for Federal Appellant 32–33. The Justice Department’s
longstanding practice of refusing to preclear changes that
it determined to have an unconstitutionally discriminatory
purpose, both before and after Beer, is entitled to “particu-
lar deference” in light of the Department’s “central role” in
administering § 5. Dougherty County Bd. of Ed. v. White,
439 U. S. 32, 39 (1978); see also United States v. Sheffield
Bd. of Comm’rs, 435 U. S. 110, 131–132 (1978); Perkins v.
Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 390–391 (1971). Most significant
here, the fact that the Justice Department has for decades
understood Beer to be limited to effect demonstrates that
such a position is entirely consistent and coherent with the
law as declared in Beer, even though it may not have been
what Congress intended.
3
Giving wider scope to purpose than to effect under § 5
would not only preserve the capacity of § 5 to bar preclear-
ance to all intended violations of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, 15 it would also enjoy the virtue of consistency with
15 Justice Breyer developed this justification for giving full effect to
the “purpose” prong in his opinion in Bossier Parish I, 520 U. S., at 493–
497 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Section 2,

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prior decisions apart from Beer. In Richmond v. United
States, 422 U. S. 358 (1975), the Court held that a city’s terri-
torial annexation reducing the percentage of black voters
could not be recognized as a legal wrong under the effect
prong of § 5, but remanded for further consideration of dis-
criminatory purpose. The majority distinguishes Richmond
as “nothing more than an ex necessitate limitation upon the
effect prong in the particular context of annexation.” Ante,
at 330. But in fact, Richmond laid down no eccentric effect
rule and is squarely at odds with the majority’s position that
only an act taken with intent to produce a forbidden effect
is forbidden under the intent prong.
As to forbidden effect, the Richmond Court said this:
“As long as the ward system fairly reflects the strength
of the Negro community as it exists after the annex-
ation, we cannot hold, without more specific legislative
direction, that such an annexation is nevertheless barred
by § 5. It is true that the black community, if there is
racial bloc voting, will command fewer seats on the city
council; and the annexation will have effected a decline
as amended, now invalidates facially neutral practices with discrimina-
tory effects even in the absence of purposeful discrimination, and is thus
no longer coextensive with our understanding of the Constitution. The
effects-only standard was added after the Court made clear, after years
of uncertainty, that the Constitution prohibited only purposeful discrimi-
nation, not neutral action with a disparate impact on minorities.
The Court has divided on the effect of this change on § 5. Compare
id., at 484, with id., at 505–506 (Stevens, J., dissenting in part and con-
curring in part). As Justice Breyer explained, that the effects prong
now goes beyond the Constitution has no bearing on whether we should
limit the meaning of the purpose prong, which does no more than re-
peat what the Constitution requires. Id., at 493–494. Both retrogres-
sive and nonretrogressive discriminatory purposes violate the Constitu-
tion. As I have said already, I agree with Justice Breyer that there is
no evidence that Congress intended to include in § 5 only part of what
the Constitution prohibits. See id., at 494. The tides of constitutional
interpretation have buffeted both § 2 and § 5, but have never ebbed so low
as to approve of discriminatory, dilutive purpose.

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in the Negroes’ relative influence in the city. But a dif-
ferent city council and an enlarged city are involved
after the annexation. Furthermore, Negro power in
the new city is not undervalued, and Negroes will not
be underrepresented on the council.
“As long as this is true, we cannot hold that the effect
of the annexation is to deny or abridge the right to
vote.” 422 U. S., at 371.
As Richmond’s references to “undervaluation” and “under-
representation” make clear, the case involves application
of standard Fifteenth Amendment principles to the annex-
ation context, not an annexation exception. As long as the
postannexation city allowed black voters to participate on
equal terms with white voters, the annexation did not
“abridge” their voting rights even if they thereafter made
up a smaller proportion of the voting population. The Court
also held, however, that in adopting the very plan whose
effect had been held to be outside the scope of legal wrong,
the city could have acted with an unlawful, discriminatory
intent that would have rendered the annexation unlawful and
barred approval under § 5:
“[I]t may be asked how it could be forbidden by § 5 to
have the purpose and intent of achieving only what is a
perfectly legal result under that section and why we
need remand for further proceedings with respect to
purpose alone. The answer is plain, and we need not
labor it. An official action, whether an annexation or
otherwise, taken for the purpose of discriminating
against Negroes on account of their race has no legiti-
macy at all under our Constitution or under the statute.
Section 5 forbids voting changes taken with the purpose
of denying the vote on the grounds of race or color.”
Id., at 378.

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It follows from Richmond that a plan lacking any underlying
purpose to cause disqualifying retrogression may be barred
by a discriminatory intent.
The majority’s attempt to distinguish Pleasant Grove v.
United States, 479 U. S. 462 (1987), is equally vain. Whereas
Richmond dealt with the argument that law and logic barred
finding a disqualifying intent when effect was lawful, Pleas-
ant Grove dealt with the argument that finding a disquali-
fying intent was impossible in fact. The Court in Pleasant
Grove denied preclearance to an annexation that added white
voters to the city’s electorate, despite the fact that at the
time of the annexation minority voting strength was non-
existent and officials of the city seeking the annexation were
unaware of any black voters whose votes could be diluted.
One thing is clear beyond peradventure: the annexation in
that case could not have been intended to cause retrogres-
sion. No one could have intended to cause retrogression be-
cause no one knew of any minority voting strength from
which retrogression was possible. 479 U. S., at 465, n. 2.
The fact that the annexation was nonetheless barred under
the purpose prong of § 5, 11 years after Beer, means that
today’s majority cannot hold as they do without overruling
Pleasant Grove.
The majority seeks to avoid Pleasant Grove by describing
it as barring “future retrogression” by nipping any such
future contingency even before the bud had formed. This
gymnastic, however, not only overlooks the contradiction
between Pleasant Grove’s holding that a voting change with-
out possible retrogressive intent could fail under the purpose
prong and the majority’s reasoning today that the baseline
for the purpose prong is the status quo; it even ignores what
the Court actually said. While the Pleasant Grove Court
said that impermissible purpose could relate to anticipated
circumstances, 479 U. S., at 471–472, it said nothing about
anticipated retrogression (a concept familiar to the Court

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since the time of Beer). The Court found it “plausible” that
the city had simply acted with “the impermissible purpose
of minimizing future black voting strength.” 479 U. S., at
471–472 (footnote omitted). The Court spoke of “minimiz-
ing,” not “causing retrogression to.” But there is more:
“One means of thwarting [integration] is to provide for
the growth of a monolithic white voting block, thereby
effectively diluting the black vote in advance. This is
just as impermissible a purpose as the dilution of pres-
ent black voting strength. Cf. City of Richmond, [422
U. S.,] at 378.” Id., at 472.
That is, a nonretrogressive dilutive purpose is just as im-
permissible under § 5 as a retrogressive one. Today’s holding
contradicts that. The majority is overruling Pleasant Grove.
The majority proffers no justification for denying the prec-
edential value of Pleasant Grove. Instead it observes that
reading the purpose prong of § 5 as covering more than ret-
rogression (as Richmond and Pleasant Grove read it) would
“exacerbate the ‘substantial’ federalism costs that the pre-
clearance procedure already exacts.” Ante, at 336. But
my reading, like the Court’s own prior reading, would not
raise the cost of federalism one penny above what the Con-
gress meant it to be. The behavior of Bossier Parish is a
plain effort to deny the voting equality that the Constitution
just as plainly guarantees. The point of § 5 is to thwart the
ingenuity of the School Board’s effort to stay ahead of chal-
lenges under § 2. Its object is to bring the country closer
to transcending a history of intransigence to enforcement
of the Fifteenth Amendment. Now, however, the promise
of § 5 is substantially diminished. Now executive and judi-
cial officers of the United States will be forced to preclear
illegal and unconstitutional voting schemes patently in-
tended to perpetuate discrimination. The appeal to fed-
eralism is no excuse. I respectfully dissent.

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Stevens, J., dissenting
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins,
dissenting.
In its administration of the voting rights statute for the
past quarter century, the Department of Justice has con-
sistently employed a construction of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 contrary to that imposed upon the Act by the Court
today. Apart from the deference such constructions are
always afforded, the Department’s reading points us directly
to the necessary starting point of any exercise in statutory
interpretation—the plain language of the statute.
It is not impossible that language alone would lead one
to think that the phrase “will not have the effect” includes
some temporal measure; the noun “effect” and the verb tense
“will have” could imaginably give rise to a reading that re-
quires a comparison between what is and what will be. But
there is simply nothing in the word “purpose” or the entire
phrase “does not have the purpose” that would lead anyone
to think that Congress had anything in mind but a present-
tense, intentional effort to “den[y] or abridg[e] the right to
vote on account of race.” See, e. g., Webster’s Third New
International Dictionary 1847 (1966). Ergo, if a municipal-
ity intends to deny or abridge voting rights because of race,
it may not obtain preclearance.
Like Justice Souter, I am persuaded that the dissent-
ing opinions of Justices White and Marshall were more faith-
ful to the intent of the Congress that enacted the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 than that of the majority in Beer v. United
States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976). One need not, however, dis-
avow that precedent in order to explain my profound dis-
agreement with the Court’s holding today. The reading
above makes clear that there is no necessary tension be-
tween the Beer majority’s interpretation of the word “effect”
in § 5 and the Department’s consistent interpretation of the
word “purpose.” For even if retrogression is an accept-
able standard for identifying prohibited effects, that as-
sumption does not justify an interpretation of the word

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374 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
Breyer, J., dissenting
“purpose” that is at war with both controlling precedent
and the plain meaning of the statutory text.
Accordingly, for these reasons and for those stated at
greater length by Justice Souter, I respectfully dissent.
Justice Breyer, dissenting.
I agree with Justice Souter, with one qualification.
I would not reconsider the correctness of the Court’s deci-
sion in Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976)—an “ef-
fects” case—because, regardless, § 5 of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 prohibits preclearance of a voting change that has
the purpose of unconstitutionally depriving minorities of the
right to vote.
As Justice Souter points out, ante, at 360–361 (opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part), Congress enacted
§ 5 in 1965 in part to prevent certain jurisdictions from limit-
ing the number of black voters through “the extraordinary
stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the
sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the
face of adverse federal court decrees.” South Carolina
v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 335 (1966). This “stratagem”
created a moving target with a consequent risk of judicial
runaround. See, e. g., Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379,
395–396 (1971). And this “stratagem” could prove similarly
effective where the State’s “new rules” were intended to ret-
rogress and where they were not. Indeed, since at the time,
in certain places, historical discrimination had left the num-
ber of black voters at close to zero, retrogression would have
proved virtually impossible where § 5 was needed most.
An example drawn from history makes the point clear. In
Forrest County, Mississippi, as of 1962, precisely three-
tenths of 1% of the voting age black population was reg-
istered to vote. United States v. Mississippi, 229 F. Supp.
925, 994, n. 86 (SD Miss. 1964) (dissenting opinion), rev’d, 380
U. S. 128 (1965). This number was due in large part to the
county registrar’s discriminatory application of the State’s

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375 Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Breyer, J., dissenting
voter registration requirements. Prior to 1961, the regis-
trar had simply refused to accept voter registration forms
from black citizens. See United States v. Lynd, 301 F. 2d
818, 821 (CA5 1962). After 1961, those blacks who were
allowed to apply to register had been subjected to a more
difficult test than whites, while whites had been offered
assistance with their less taxing applications. And the reg-
istrar, upon denying the applications of black citizens, had
refused to supply them with an explanation. Id., at 822.
The Government attacked these practices, and the Fifth
Circuit enjoined the registrar from “[f]ailing to process ap-
plications for registrations submitted by Negro applicants
on the same basis as applications submitted by white appli-
cants.” Id., at 823.
Mississippi’s “immediate response” to this injunction was
to impose a “good moral character requirement,” Missis-
sippi, supra, at 997, a standard this Court has character-
ized as “an open invitation to abuse at the hands of voting
officials,” Katzenbach, supra, at 313. One federal judge
believed that this change was designed to avoid the Fifth
Circuit’s injunction by “defy[ing] a Federal Appellate Court
determination that particular applicants were qualified
[to vote].” Mississippi, supra, at 997. Such defiance would
result in maintaining—though not, in light of the absence of
blacks from the Forrest County voting rolls, in increasing—
white political supremacy.
This is precisely the kind of activity for which § 5 was de-
signed, and the purpose of § 5 would have demanded its ap-
plication in such a case. See, e. g., Perkins, supra, at 395–
396 (Congress knew that the “Department of Justice d[id]
not have the resources to police effectively all the States . . .
covered by the Act,” and § 5 was intended to ensure that
States not institute “new laws with respect to voting that
might have a racially discriminatory purpose”); Katzenbach,
supra, at 314 (Prior to 1965, “[e]ven when favorable decisions
ha[d] finally been obtained, some of the States affected ha[d]

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376 RENO v. BOSSIER PARISH SCHOOL BD.
Breyer, J., dissenting
merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by
the federal decrees”).
And nothing in the Act’s language or its history suggests
the contrary. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 439, 89th Cong., 1st
Sess., 10 (1965) (“Barring one contrivance too often has
caused no change in result, only in methods”); S. Rep.
No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, p. 12 (1965) ( joint views
of 12 members of Senate Judiciary Committee, describing
United States v. Parker, 236 F. Supp. 511, 517 (MD Ala.
1964), in which a jurisdiction responded to an injunction by
instituting various means for “the rejection of qualified
Negro applicants”); Hearings on H. R. 6400 before Sub-
committee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary,
89th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (1965) (testimony of Attorney Gen-
eral Katzenbach) (discussing those jurisdictions that are
“able, even after apparent defeat in the courts, to devise
whole new methods of discrimination”); Hearings on S. 1564
before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong.,
1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 11 (1965) (testimony of Attorney General
Katzenbach) (similar).
It seems obvious, then, that if Mississippi had enacted
its “moral character” requirement in 1966 (after enactment
of the Voting Rights Act), a court applying § 5 would have
found “the purpose . . . of denying or abridging the right
to vote on account of race,” even if Mississippi had in-
tended to permit, say, 0.4%, rather than 0.3%, of the black
voting age population of Forrest County to register. And
if so, then irrespective of the complexity surrounding the
administration of an “effects” test, the answer to today’s
purpose question is “yes.”