Morse v. Republican Party of Va., 517 U.S. 186, 40 (1996)

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Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)

Opinion of Stevens, J.

of the Act to practices that prevent a voter at a general election from casting a ballot and having it counted, see post, at 278 (citing the concurrence in Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874 (1994)), we have no doubt that Congress intended to prohibit the dominant political parties from engaging in discriminatory practices in primary elections as well as conventions of the character involved in this case.

In his separate dissent, Justice Kennedy accuses us of adopting a "blanket rule" that all political parties must pre-clear all of their "internal procedures." See post, at 250, 251. That characterization is quite inaccurate. We hold that political parties are covered under § 5 only in certain limited circumstances: here, only insofar as the Party exercises delegated power over the electoral process when it charges a fee for the right to vote for its candidates. It is Justice Kennedy who proposes the "blanket rule" that political parties are never covered under the Act, no matter what functions they perform and no matter what authority the State grants them. As we have explained, on that construction even situations involving blatant discrimination by political parties of the kind not seen since the White Primary Cases would fail to trigger the preclearance requirement.

Justice Kennedy downplays the significance of this drastic limitation by arguing that voters who face electoral discrimination could sue under the Fifteenth Amendment. But lawsuits are no substitute for the preclearance requirement; if they were, § 5 would be superfluous for governmental units, too. As we have explained, the fundamental purpose of the preclearance system was to "shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims," South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 328, by declaring all changes in voting rules void until they are cleared by the Attorney General or by the District Court for the District of Columbia. Justice Kennedy's construction would reimpose the very burden § 5 was designed to

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