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Opinion of Stevens, J.
enforcement of the guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, see 42 U. S. C. § 1973h(b) (1988 ed.), Congress must have intended it to provide private remedies.
The same logic applies to § 14(e), added in 1975, which allows attorney fees to be granted to "the prevailing party, other than the United States," in any action "to enforce the voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment." 42 U. S. C. § 1973l(e) (1988 ed.) (emphasis added). Obviously, a private litigant is not the United States, and the Attorney General does not collect attorney's fees.46 Both
this section and § 3 thus recognize the existence of a private right of action under § 10.47
Last, appellees argue that § 10 does not apply to the Party's nominating convention because a delegate registration fee is not a poll tax. This argument addresses the merits rather than the right to sue. Without reaching the merits, the District Court dismissed appellants' claim because it held there was no private cause of action under § 10. Since we
tee concludes that it is sound policy to authorize private remedies to assist the process of enforcing voting rights." S. Rep. No. 94-295, at 40.
46 The Senate Report states: "Such a provision is appropriate in voting rights cases because there, as in employment and public accomodations [sic] cases, and other civil rights cases, Congress depends heavily upon private citizens to enforce the fundamental rights involved. Fee awards are a necessary means of enabling private citizens to vindicate these Federal rights." Ibid.
47 Appellees argue that any congressional action taken in 1975 cannot support the existence of an implied private right of action because this Court began applying a stricter test for implied rights in Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975). We note that Cort was decided on June 17, 1975, while the amendments to the Act were passed on August 6 of the same year. Pub. L. 94-73, 89 Stat. 400. Seven weeks—in the context of a bill that was first proposed more than a year earlier—is scarcely enough time for Congress to take account of a change in the "contemporary legal context," especially one whose nature and impact were the subject of some dispute at the time. See Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 739-743 (1979) (Powell, J., dissenting) (arguing that Cort relaxed the standards for finding implied rights of action).
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