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Syllabus
bat different evils and, accordingly, to impose very different duties upon the States. See Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 883 (plurality opinion). Section 5 freezes election procedures in a covered jurisdiction until that jurisdiction proves that its proposed changes do not have the purpose, and will not have the effect, of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race. See Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 140. It is designed to combat only those effects that are retrogressive. Retrogression, by definition, requires a comparison of a jurisdiction's new voting plan with its existing plan, see Holder, supra, at 883 (plurality opinion), and necessarily implies that the jurisdiction's existing plan is the benchmark against which the "effect" of voting changes is measured. Section 2, on the other hand, applies in all jurisdictions and uses as its benchmark for comparison in vote dilution claims a hypothetical, undiluted plan. Making compliance with § 5 contingent upon compliance with § 2, as appellants urge, would, for all intents and purposes, replace the standards for § 5 with those for § 2, thus contradicting more than 20 years of precedent interpreting § 5. See, e. g., Beer, supra. Appellants' contentions that their reading of § 5 is supported by the Beer decision, by the Attorney General's regulations, and by public policy considerations are rejected. Pp. 476-485. 2. Evidence showing that a jurisdiction's redistricting plan dilutes minorities' voting power may be relevant to establish a jurisdiction's "intent to retrogress" under § 5, so there is no need to decide today whether such evidence is relevant to establish other types of discriminatory intent or whether § 5's purpose inquiry ever extends beyond the search for retrogressive intent. Because this Court cannot say with confidence that the District Court considered the evidence proffered to show that the Board's reapportionment plan was dilutive, this aspect of that court's holding must be vacated. Pp. 486-490. (a) Section 2 evidence may be "relevant" within the meaning of Federal Rule of Evidence 401, for the fact that a plan has a dilutive impact makes it "more probable" that the jurisdiction adopting that plan acted with an intent to retrogress than "it would be without the evidence." This does not, of course, mean that evidence of a plan's dilutive impact is dispositive of the § 5 purpose inquiry. Indeed, if it were, § 2 would be effectively incorporated into § 5, a result this Court finds unsatisfactory. In conducting their inquiry into a jurisdiction's motivation in enacting voting changes, courts should look for guidance to Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U. S. 252, which sets forth a framework for examining discriminatory purpose. Pp. 486-489. (b) This Court is unable to determine whether the District Court deemed irrelevant all evidence of the dilutive impact of the redistricting
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