Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
In another argument that applies equally to our holding in Beer, appellants object that our reading of § 5 would require 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 determination 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 protection of that Amendment in the present case." Id., at 65; see also id., at 84, n. 3 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (characterizing plurality 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 emptyhanded, 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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