522
Stevens, J., dissenting
tion of the Road Supervision Resolution as a change with a "potential for discrimination" that was "blatant and obvious," App. to Juris. Statement of Appellant Presley 20a, and that should be enjoined unless subjected to § 5 preclearance, id., at 21a, 23a, applies equally to the Common Fund Resolution. Both resolutions diminished the decisionmaking authority of the newly elected black commissioner, and both were passed on the same day and in response to the districting changes effected by the consent decree.23
the change would have a discriminatory purpose or effect. The distinction is important because "[t]he discriminatory potential in seemingly innocent or insignificant changes can only be determined after the specific facts of the change are analyzed in context. The present coverage formula allows for such a factual analysis." Hearings on Extension of the Voting Rights Act before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 2122 (1981) (testimony of Drew Days, Professor, Yale Law School and former U. S. Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice); see H. R. Rep. No. 97-227, p. 35 (1981); NAACP v. Hampton County Election Comm'n, 470 U. S., at 176, n. 21.
23 The District Court approved a consent decree that provided, inter alia, for an increase in the number of Etowah County Commissioners in order to remedy the unlawful dilution of black voting strength caused by the prior at-large election system. See Dillard v. Crenshaw County, Civ. Action No. 85-T-1332-N (MD Ala., Nov. 12, 1986); ante, at 496. The decree expanded the Commission to six members, all of whom would eventually be elected from single-member districts. See App. to Juris. Statement of Appellant Presley 5a. The consent decree specified that the commissioners elected in 1986 were to have the same duties as the four holdover commissioners. Ibid. (decree provided that the two new commissioners " 'shall have all the rights, privileges, duties and immunities of the other commissioners, who have heretofore been elected at large' "). In August 1987, however, the commission passed the Road Supervision Resolution, which authorized the four holdover commissioners to continue to exercise authority over road operations in their districts, but which assigned nonroad duties to the two new commissioners. Id., at 6a. On the same day, the same commission adopted a second resolution, the Common Fund Resolution, which abolished the practice of allocating road funds to districts and created a common fund, thus transferring authority for determining funding priorities from the individual commissioners to
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