Cite as: 519 U. S. 9 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
view, its only option was to order the County to conduct an at-large, countywide judicial election in March 1996, while enjoining future elections pending preclearance of a permanent plan. Judges elected in 1996 would serve for the usual 6-year terms. The District Court also joined the State as an indispensable party, based on the State's argument that the County was doing nothing more than administering a state statute that required countywide elections, rather than administering its own county ordinance. Thus, in essence, four years after the filing of the complaint in this case, the District Court ordered the County to hold elections under the very same scheme that appellants originally challenged under § 5 as unprecleared.
On January 22, 1996, appellants filed an emergency application in this Court to enjoin the 1996 elections pending appeal. We granted the application on February 1, 516 U. S. 1104 (1996), and noted probable jurisdiction on April 1, 517 U. S. 1118 (1996).
II
A
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act applies whenever a covered jurisdiction "enact[s] or seek[s] to administer any . . . standard, practice, or procedure" different from that in force on the date of § 5 coverage. As a threshold matter, the State contends that, although the County perhaps should have submitted the consolidation ordinances to federal authorities before implementing them, intervening changes in California law have transformed the County's judicial election scheme into a state plan. Therefore, asserts the State, the County is not administering County consolidation ordinances in conducting municipal court elections, but is merely implementing California law, for which § 5 preclearance is not needed. The District Court was "not persuaded" by this argument, but ruled that the State could continue to seek to show that the County was merely administering California law. See
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