Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of Souter, J.
tent behind a redistricting plan disqualifies it from § 5 pre-clearance, then preclearance is impossible on this record. Since the burden to negate such intent (like the burden to negate retrogressive intent and effect) rests on the voting district asking for preclearance, nothing more is required to show the impossibility of preclearance. See, e. g., Pleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462, 469 (1987). It is worth noting, however, that the parish should likewise lose even if we assume, as the District Court majority seems to have done at one point, that the burden to show disqualifying intent is on the Government and the intervenors. Bossier Parish II, 7 F. Supp. 2d, at 31 ("We can imagine a set of facts that would establish a 'non-retrogressive, but nevertheless discriminatory purpose,' but those imagined facts are not present here"). It is not only that Judge Kessler was correct in her conclusion that dilutive but nonretrogressive intent was shown; the contrary view of the District Court majority raises " 'the definite and firm conviction that a mistake [has] been committed,' " Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal., 508 U. S. 602, 622 (1993) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364, 395 (1948)). Regardless of the burden of persuasion, therefore, the parish should lose under the intent prong of § 5, if the purpose that disqualifies under § 5 includes an intent to dilute minority voting strength regardless of retrogression.
III
A
The legal issue here is the meaning of "abridging" in the provision of § 5 that preclearance of a districting change in a covered jurisdiction requires a showing that the new plan does not "have the purpose . . . of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color . . . ." The language tracks that of the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee that "[t]he right of citizens . . . to vote shall not be
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