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Opinion of the Court
different voting districts—will serve as the baseline against which appellee's next voting plan will be evaluated for the purposes of preclearance. Whether (and precisely how) that future plan represents a change from the baseline, and, if so, whether it is retrogressive in effect, will depend on whether preclearance of the 1992 plan was proper.
We turn, then, to the merits.
III
Appellants press the two claims initially raised in their jurisdictional statements: first, that the District Court's factual conclusion that there was no evidence of discriminatory but nonretrogressive intent was clearly erroneous, and second, that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits pre-clearance of a redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose. Our resolution of the second claim renders it unnecessary to address the first. When considered in light of our longstanding interpretation of the "effect" prong of § 5 in its application to vote-dilution claims, the language of § 5 leads to the conclusion that the "purpose" prong of § 5 covers only retrogressive dilution.
As noted earlier, in order to obtain preclearance under § 5, a covered jurisdiction must demonstrate that the proposed change "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. A covered jurisdiction, therefore, must make two distinct showings: first, that the proposed change "does not have the purpose . . . of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color," and second, that the proposed change "will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color." The covered jurisdiction bears the burden of persuasion on both points. See Bossier Parish I, 520 U. S., at 478 ( judicial preclearance); 28 CFR § 51.52(a) (1999) (administrative preclearance).
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