276
Opinion of the Court
the merits of a claim raised by the State that the current, countywide election scheme is not subject to § 5 preclearance because the scheme is now required by a combination of pre-cleared law and California law. Id., at 19-20. State law, under this view, does not require preclearance because it is not the product of a covered jurisdiction.
On remand, the State moved to dismiss appellants' complaint on this theory, among others, and the District Court agreed that preclearance was unnecessary because the countywide scheme was now mandated by California law. No. C-91-20559-RMW (ND Cal., Dec. 19, 1997), App. to Juris. Statement 1, 4-9. Among the other grounds for dismissal raised in its motion, the State also alleged that appellants' claims are barred by laches, that it was constitutional error to designate the County as a covered jurisdiction under § 5, and that the consolidation ordinances did not alter a voting "standard, practice, or procedure" subject to pre-clearance under § 5. The District Court did not address these alternative bases to dismiss appellants' complaint, however, and we do not reach them here. The State also moved to vacate a September 25, 1996, order extending the terms of the judges elected under the 1995 interim plan. The District Court granted this request along with the State's motion to dismiss.
In granting the motion to dismiss, the District Court reasoned that § 5, by its own terms, creates a preclearance obligation only for covered jurisdictions. Noncovered entities, like the State, bear no responsibility to preclear voting changes that they "enact or seek to administer." See id., at 5. "[T]he purpose of § 5 appears to be to target only those enactments by jurisdictions suspected of abridging the right to vote and not those put in force by a non-covered, superior jurisdiction." Ibid.
Here, the District Court concluded, the 1979 state law had consolidated the three existing municipal courts and mandated that there be one municipal court district in the
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