286
Opinion of the Court
change, notwithstanding the city's failure to preclear a change in its charter to the same effect. It is true that, in City of Monroe, the municipality was permitted to give effect to the statewide law without any need to preclear its effect at the city level. A second preclearance would have been wholly unnecessary, however. The Attorney General had already approved the change. 522 U. S., at 37 ("Since the Attorney General precleared [the statewide law], Monroe may implement it"). Accordingly, City of Monroe does not stand for the proposition that covered jurisdictions are generally permitted to engage in the discretionless implementation of state laws without seeking preclearance. The very change that the city of Monroe wished to enforce had already been precleared.
Finally, we note that this Court has created an exception to the preclearance requirement in certain cases involving federally court-ordered voting changes. As a general rule, voting changes crafted wholly by a federal district court in the first instance do not require preclearance. See Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, 691 (1971) (per curiam). Thus, in Connor, the Court rejected a claim that § 5 required pre-clearance of an electoral apportionment scheme developed and ordered by a Federal District Court in the course of litigation over the constitutionality of a Mississippi voting plan. Ibid. This narrow exception to the preclearance requirement, however, is not grounded in the fact that a voting change is mandated by a noncovered entity, without room for discretion on the part of a covered jurisdiction. Rather, the exception grows largely from separation-of-powers concerns arising where a voting measure is the product of a federal court, specifically. As Justice Black noted in his dissent in Connor:
"Needless to say I completely agree with the holding of the majority that a reapportionment plan formulated and ordered by a federal district court need
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