Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
400 U. S. 379, 383-385 (1971); Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S., at 570. The critical question for us, as for the District Court below, is whether "the challenged alteration has the potential for discrimination." Hampton County Election Comm'n, 470 U. S., at 181 (emphasis in original). It is not contested that the Party's filing fee had that potential.29
The second argument misconceives the purpose of the pre-clearance system and the nature of the Act as a whole. Again, the very preamble of the Act states that its purpose is to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. 79 Stat. 437. Section 5 "is a means of assuring in advance the absence of all electoral illegality, not only that which violates the Voting Rights Act but that which violates the Constitution as well." Chisom, 501 U. S., at 416 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). It is beyond question, therefore, that the Act encompassed the discriminatory practices struck down in Terry and Smith, which this Court had found violative of the same constitutional guarantees. Not only were they the leading cases securing the right to vote against racial discrimination at the time of enactment, but Congress passed the Act to facilitate the enforcement effort they embodied. It strains credulity to suppose that despite Congress' professed impatience with the "case-by-case" method of enforcing voting rights, it did not mean to cover the cases that capped the struggle to end the white primary.30
29 Justice Thomas' claim that there has been no purposeful evasion of the Constitution, see post, at 269-270, is therefore irrelevant.
30 Appellees' theory is particularly unpersuasive in light of the fact that other parts of the Voting Rights Act reach beyond the scope of § 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment. For example, the Act created a per se ban on literacy tests despite this Court's decision that facially fair tests are not themselves unconstitutional. Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U. S. 45 (1959). We upheld this exercise of Congress' power under § 2 of the Amendment without overruling Lassiter. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 334 (1966); see also City of Rome
217
Page: Index Previous 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007