Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Texas counties by a private organization known as the Jaybird Democratic Association. It conducted a so-called "Jaybird primary" at which white voters selected candidates who thereafter ran in and nearly always won the Democratic Party's primary and the general election. Although the Jaybirds had no official status, received no state funds, and conducted a purely private election, the Court readily concluded that this voluntary association's exclusion of black voters from its primaries on racial grounds was prohibited by the Fifteenth Amendment. Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953). Citing our earlier cases, Justice Clark tersely noted that an "old pattern in new guise is revealed by the record." Id., at 480 (concurring opinion).
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1964 because it concluded that case-by-case enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment, as exemplified by the history of the white primary in Texas, had proved ineffective to stop discriminatory voting practices in certain areas of the country on account of the intransigence of officials who "resorted to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees." South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 335 (citing H. R. Rep. No. 439, at 10-11; S. Rep. No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 8, 12 (1965)). The preclearance system of § 5 was designed to end this evasion once and for all. By prohibiting officials in covered jurisdictions from implementing any change in voting practices without prior approval from the District Court for the District of Columbia or the Attorney General, it sought to "shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims." South Carolina v. Katz-enbach, 383 U. S., at 328.27
27 Congress was plainly aware of the power of political parties to carry out discriminatory electoral practices as a supplement to or a substitute for voting discrimination by government officials. Of course, the White Primary Cases supplied the primary historical examples of such prac-
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