44
Souter, J., dissenting
the "effect" of forbidden abridgment of voting rights. Ibid. A new practice and a new effect could result not only from applying the code's default provision to an invalid (because unprecleared) charter revision, but also from applying it to a perfectly valid charter provision and practice. In either case, on the sensible reasoning of City of Rome, there can be no preclearance of a new practice unless the Attorney General is unambiguously put on notice of it. See 446 U. S., at 169-170, n. 6. Thus, Monroe is in no different position from Rome. Neither Rome nor the State ever disclosed the 1966 charter change on which the default provision might operate to provide a new majority vote requirement; neither Monroe nor the State ever disclosed the pre-1966 charter silence on which the default provision might operate to provide a new majority vote requirement. Alternative analyses, leading to the conclusion that the Attorney General's preclearance of the relevant section of the 1968 code also precleared its undisclosed effects, are not only at odds with the unambiguous language of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but imply that the Attorney General was quite the cavalier when he approved the default provision in 1968. Since no particular charter provisions were submitted to him along with the 1968 code, City of Rome, supra, he was not on notice of any particular effect that might result from application of the default provision. It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that his approval of the code was meant to pre-clear its undisclosed applications even as to otherwise valid charter provisions and municipal practices.*
*My analysis entails a modest but nonetheless discernible scope for the Attorney General's preclearance of the 1968 deferral and default provisions. The preclearance may have left the provisions enforceable insofar as they would result in ratification of prior, valid municipal practices (assuming that preclearance was necessary as to such applications); in any case, the preclearance amounted to findings that the default provision did not as such represent an intent to affect minority voting adversely, and that some applications of the provision would presumably be possible without adverse effects.
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