22
Opinion of the Court
ceed." Id., at 654-655. We found no such exigency to exist in Clark, and we find none here.
The State contends that there is a difference between a district court's failing to enjoin an unprecleared election scheme—the situation in Clark—and its ordering, pursuant to its equitable remedial authority, an election under an unprecleared plan. Regardless whether this distinction is meaningful, it does not advance the argument that the County's judicial elections may be held without § 5 preclearance. We have recognized, at least in cases raising claims under the Fourteenth Amendment, that § 5 preclearance requirements may not apply where a district court independently crafts a remedial electoral plan. McDaniel v. Sanchez, supra, 148-150 (quoting S. Rep. No. 94-295, pp. 18-19 (1975)). But where a court adopts a proposal "reflecting the policy choices . . . of the people [in a covered jurisdiction] . . . the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act is applicable." 452 U. S., at 153. The at-large, countywide system under which the District Court ordered the County to conduct elections undoubtedly "reflect[ed] the policy choices" of the County; it was the same system that the County had adopted in the first place. It was, therefore, error for the District Court to order elections under that system before it had been precleared by either the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
We appreciate the predicament that the District Court faced. The County did not submit the consolidation ordinances for preclearance when they were adopted many years ago, and the District Court concluded that changes have occurred in the intervening years that make unrealistic a return to the judicial election plan of 1968, now nearly 30 years old. Since there may be no practical way to go back to the 1968 plan, simply enjoining the elections would leave the County without a judicial election system. The County and appellants seem unable to fashion an election plan that does
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