250
Kennedy, J., dissenting
Act"). Congress knows the difference between regulating States and other actors, and in § 5 chose only to regulate the States.
The First Amendment questions presented by governmental intrusion into political party functions are a further reason for caution before we adopt a blanket rule that preclearance is required on the theory that when Congress used the word "State" it also meant "political party." Sensitive consideration of the rights of speech and association counsels much restraint before finding that a political party is a state actor for purposes of all preclearance requirements. In particular, we have called for circumspection in drawing the state-action line where political parties and their roles in selecting representative leaders are concerned. See Cousins v. Wigoda, 419 U. S. 477, 483, n. 4 (1975) (reserving question whether national political party's selection of delegates to nominating convention amounts to state action). See also id., at 492-494 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in result); O'Brien v. Brown, 409 U. S. 1, 4-5 (1972) (per curiam) (staying order that political party seat certain delegates at its national convention and expressing "grave doubts" about Court of Appeals' action in case raising "[h]ighly important" state-action question); Republican State Central Comm. of Ariz. v. Ripon Society Inc., 409 U. S. 1222, 1226-1227 (1972) (Rehnquist, J., in chambers); Ripon Society, Inc. v. National Republican Party, 525 F. 2d 567, 574-576 (1975) (en banc), cert. denied, 424 U. S. 933 (1976).
Notwithstanding the terse dismissals of these concerns in the opinions that support today's judgment, ante, at 228-229 (opinion of Stevens, J.); ante, at 239 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment), we have recognized before now the important First Amendment values that attach to a political party's "freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit the association to those people only." Democratic Party of United States v. Wisconsin ex rel. La
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