Cite as: 525 U. S. 266 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
not be approved by the United States Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Under our constitutional system it would be strange indeed to construe § 5 . . . to require that actions of a federal court be stayed and reviewed by the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia." Id., at 695.
We have since recognized limitations on the Connor exception. In McDaniel v. Sanchez, 452 U. S. 130 (1981), the District Court had sustained a constitutional challenge to a county apportionment scheme and had ordered the implementation of a new plan that the county had submitted to the court. In holding that the new plan should have been precleared before the District Court took any action on it, we noted that § 5 "requires that whenever a covered jurisdiction submits [to a district court] a proposal reflecting the policy choices of the elected representatives of the people . . . the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act is applicable." Id., at 153. Nor does this requirement that there be some "policy choic[e]" by the local jurisdiction represent a general rule that a covered jurisdiction must exercise discretion to trigger the § 5 preclearance obligations. McDaniel may best be read merely as an effort to isolate and protect wholly court-developed plans from preclearance. In any event, McDaniel applies only to voting changes embodied in federal-court orders, and we need not further define the scope of its exception to the Connor rule here.
We hold that the County is obligated to seek preclearance under § 5 before giving effect to voting changes required by state law. Accordingly, the judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
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