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Amendment, the 89th Congress did not intend to legislate to that Amendment's "outer limit"; and (3) that present-day Virginia is not a one-party Commonwealth, unlike post-Reconstruction Texas—is persuasive. Pp. 210-219. (d) None of the dissents' arguments for rejecting the foregoing construction of § 5—that a political party is not a "State or political subdivision" within § 5's literal meaning because it is not a governmental unit; that the Court should not defer to the Attorney General's regulation when construing § 5's coverage; that a major political party is not a "state actor" under the Court's decisions unless its nominees are virtually certain to win the general election; and that the construction amounts to adoption of a "blanket rule" that all political parties must preclear all of their internal procedures—is convincing. Pp. 220-226. (e) Appellees' practical objections to the foregoing construction of § 5—(1) that it will create an administrative nightmare for political parties and the Justice Department, and (2) that it threatens to abridge First Amendment associational rights—are rejected. Pp. 227-229. 2. Section 10 of the Act—which does not expressly mention private actions when it authorizes the Attorney General to file suit against racially motivated poll taxes—does not preclude appellants from challenging the Party's registration fee as a prohibited poll tax. Evaluation of congressional action must take into account its contemporary legal context. See, e. g., Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 698- 699. Because the Act was passed against a "backdrop" of decisions in which implied causes of action were regularly found, see id., at 698, and nn. 22-23, private parties may sue to enforce § 10, just as they may enforce § 5, see Allen, supra, at 556, 557, n. 23, or § 2, see, e. g., Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380. Appellees' argument to the contrary was rejected in Allen, supra, at 556, n. 20, and is also refuted by §§ 3 and 14(e) of the Act, both of which recognize the existence of a private § 10 right of action. Appellees' argument that a delegate registration fee is not a poll tax addresses the merits and should be considered by the District Court in the first instance. Pp. 230-235.
Justice Breyer, joined by Justice O'Connor and Justice Souter, concluded: 1. In light of the legislative history demonstrating that, in 1965, Congress was well aware of the White Primary Cases, the failure of case-by-case enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment, and Mississippi's then-recent efforts to use an "all-white" convention process to help nominate a Democratic candidate for President, and that the Act's "party office" provision was adopted to cover the latter type of situation, the Act cannot be interpreted to contain a loophole excluding all political party activity, but must be read to apply to certain convention-based
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