Cite as: 520 U. S. 471 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
417, 2d Sess., p. 4 (1982); South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 308 (1966). Two of the weapons in the Federal Government's formidable arsenal are § 5 and § 2 of the Act. Although we have consistently understood these sections to combat different evils and, accordingly, to impose very different duties upon the States, see Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 883 (1994) (plurality opinion) (noting how the two sections "differ in structure, purpose, and application"), appellants nevertheless ask us to hold that a violation of § 2 is an independent reason to deny preclearance under § 5. Unlike Justice Stevens, post, at 502-503, and n. 5 (opinion dissenting in part and concurring in part), we entertain little doubt that the Department of Justice or other litigants would "routinely" attempt to avail themselves of this new reason for denying preclearance, so that recognizing § 2 violations as a basis for denying § 5 preclearance would inevitably make compliance with § 5 contingent upon compliance with § 2. Doing so would, for all intents and purposes, replace the standards for § 5 with those for § 2. Because this would contradict our longstanding interpretation of these two sections of the Act, we reject appellants' position.
Section 5, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, was enacted as
"a response to a common practice in some jurisdictions of staying one step ahead of the federal courts by passing new discriminatory voting laws as soon as the old ones had been struck down. . . . Congress therefore decided, as the Supreme Court held it could, 'to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victim,' by 'freezing election procedures in the covered areas unless the changes can be shown to be nondiscriminatory.' " Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 140 (1976) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 94-196, pp. 57-58 (1970)).
In light of this limited purpose, § 5 applies only to certain States and their political subdivisions. Such a covered ju-
477
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007