Cite as: 515 U. S. 737 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
and that the separation lacks sufficient justification." Id., at 658. Appellees Ray Hays, Edward Adams, Susan Shaw Singleton, and Gary Stokley claim that the State of Louisiana's congressional districting plan is such a "racial gerry-mander," and that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. But appellees do not live in the district that is the primary focus of their racial gerrymandering claim, and they have not otherwise demonstrated that they, personally, have been subjected to a racial classification. For that reason, we conclude that appellees lack standing to bring this lawsuit.
I
Louisiana has been covered by § 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 79 Stat. 438, as amended, 84 Stat. 315, 42 U. S. C. § 1973b(b), since November 1, 1964, see 28 CFR pt. 51, App. The effect of such coverage is set forth in VRA § 5, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c: Whenever a covered jurisdiction "shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964," it must first either obtain a declaratory judgment from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that the change "does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color," or receive "preclearance" from the Attorney General to the same effect. Any redistricting plan in Louisiana is subject to these requirements.
Accordingly, in 1991, Louisiana submitted to the Attorney General for preclearance a districting plan for its Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Louisiana's BESE districts historically have paralleled its congressional districts, so the submitted plan contained one majority-minority district (that is, a district "in which a majority of the population is a member of a specific minority group," Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 149 (1993)) out of eight, as
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