Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
At bottom, appellants' disagreement with our reading of § 5 rests not upon textual analysis, but upon their opposition to our holding in Beer. Although they do not explicitly contend that Beer should be overruled, they all but do so by arguing that it would be "untenable" to conclude (as we did in Beer) that the phrase "abridging the right to vote on account of race or color" refers only to retrogression in § 5, Reply Brief for Federal Appellant on Reargument 1, in light of the fact that virtually identical language elsewhere in the Voting Rights Act—and indeed, in the Fifteenth Amend-ment—has never been read to refer only to retrogression. See § 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1973(a) ("No voting [practice] shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color . . ."); U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, § 1 ("The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude").2 The term "abridge," however—whose
2 Appellants also cite § 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act, which provides, with regard to a court that has found a violation of the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment, that "the court . . . shall retain jurisdiction for such period as it may deem appropriate and during such period no voting [practice] different from that in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be enforced unless and until the court finds that such [practice] 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. § 1973a(c). This provision does not assist appellants' case because it is not at all clear that it confers the power to deny approval to nonretrogressive redistricting. That is to say, it may well contemplate that, once a court has struck down an unconstitutional practice and granted relief with regard to that practice, it may assume for that jurisdiction a function identical to that of the District Court for the District of Columbia in § 5 preclearance proceedings. This is suggested by the fact that the State may avoid the court's jurisdiction in this regard by obtaining preclearance from the Attorney General; and that § 3(c), like § 5, explicitly leaves open the possibility that a proposed change approved by the court can be challenged as unconstitutional
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