324
Opinion of the Court
Board rejected Price's suggestion and adopted the Police Jury's 1991 redistricting plan as its own.
On January 4, 1993, the Board submitted its redistricting plan to the Attorney General for preclearance. Although the Attorney General had precleared the identical plan when submitted by the Police Jury, she interposed a formal objection to the Board's plan, asserting that "new information"—specifically, the NAACP plan proposed by appellant-intervenor Price—demonstrated that "black residents are sufficiently numerous and geographically compact so as to constitute a majority in two single-member districts." App. to Juris. Statement in No. 98-405, p. 235a. The Attorney General disclaimed any attempt to compel the Board to "adopt any particular plan," but maintained that the Board was "not free to adopt a plan that unnecessarily limits the opportunity for minority voters to elect their candidates of choice." Ibid.
After the Attorney General denied the Board's request for reconsideration, the Board filed the present action for judicial preclearance of the 1992 plan in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act authorizes preclearance of a proposed voting change that "does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color." 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. Before the District Court, appellants conceded that the Board's plan did not have a prohibited "effect" under § 5, since it did not worsen the position of minority voters. (In Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976), we held that a plan has a prohibited "effect" only if it is retrogressive.) Instead, appellants made two distinct claims. First, they argued that pre-clearance should be denied because the Board's plan, by not creating as many majority-black districts as it should create, violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars discriminatory voting practices. Second, they contended that,
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