Cite as: 525 U. S. 266 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
plan that they felt would comport with the requirements of the Voting Rights Act and that did not violate some aspect of state law. Under these circumstances, the District Court opted to put a voting scheme in place for purposes of a single election. See 871 F. Supp., at 1255-1256. The temporary plan, under which judges were elected from districts but served countywide, violated California constitutional provisions requiring that jurisdiction be coextensive with a judge's electoral base and prohibiting the division of cities among two or more municipal courts. See Cal. Const., Art. VI, § 16(b); Art. VI, § 5(a). The District Court concluded, however, that the single election would interfere only minimally with state interests. See 871 F. Supp., at 1259-1260.
The Attorney General precleared the court's interim plan in March 1995, and judges were selected in a 1995 special election to serve until January 1997. Following the election, however, this Court decided Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900 (1995), which, in the District Court's view, cast doubt on the legality of the interim plan. Having determined that other options were not feasible, the court thus ordered a new judicial election to be held in March 1996 under a countywide voting scheme, the very scheme that the County had effected through its consolidation ordinances and that appellants had challenged in their original complaint.
This Court granted appellants' emergency stay application and enjoined the proposed, countywide election. 516 U. S. 1104 (1996). We subsequently noted probable jurisdiction over the appeal, 517 U. S. 1118 (1996), and we reversed, Lopez v. Monterey County, 519 U. S. 9 (1996). The District Court had erred, we concluded, in directing an election to take place under a scheme that had not been precleared as required under § 5. Accordingly, we remanded the matter to the District Court and directed that "[t]he requirement of federal scrutiny should be satisfied without further delay." Id., at 25. In so doing, we expressly declined to pass on
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