930
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
voters could comply." Allen, supra, at 587 (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But it should be obvious that a districting system, or any other potentially dilutive mechanism for that matter, is not something with which a voter can comply. As is the case with § 2, § 5's description of the terms "standard, practice, or procedure" thus suggests a focus on rules that regulate the individual voter's ability to register and cast a ballot, not a more abstract concern with the effect that various electoral systems might have on the "weight" of the votes cast by a group that constitutes a numerical minority in the electorate.
In my view, the tension between the terms of the Act and the construction we have placed on § 5 at the very least suggests that our interpretation of § 5 should not be adopted wholesale to supply the meaning of the terms "standard, practice, or procedure" under § 2. An expansive construction of § 5 was well established in 1980, yet a plurality of the Court in Bolden, after focusing on the terms of the Act, did not adopt a similarly expansive construction of § 2. Rather, the Bolden plurality concluded that § 2 should be strictly limited to have the same reach as the Fifteenth Amendment, which the plurality interpreted as addressing only matters relating to access to the ballot. See Bolden, 446 U. S., at 61, 65. I would reach a similar result here. Where a careful reading of the language of § 2 dictates a narrow interpretation of the section, there is no reason for transplanting our interpretation of the terms of § 5—an interpretation that I believe is in tension with the text of § 5 itself—to another section of the Act.27
27 I need not decide in this case whether I would overrule our decisions construing the terms "standard, practice, or procedure" in § 5; the challenge here involves only § 2. Although in my view our construction of § 5 may well be incorrect as a matter of first impression, stare decisis would suggest that such an error in prior decisions may not in itself justify overruling settled precedent. Determining whether to abandon prior decisions requires weighing a multitude of factors, one of the most important of which is the extent to which the decisions in question have proved unworkable. Cf. infra, at 936-937. In that regard, while the practical
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