Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of Souter, J.
(which Congress is always free to supersede with new legislation), see Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Comm'n, 502 U. S. 197, 202 (1991), and § 5 presents no exception to the rule that when statutory language is construed it should stay construed. But it is another thing entirely to ignore error in extending discredited reasoning to previously unspoiled statutory provisions. That, however, is just what the Court does in extending Beer from § 5 effects to § 5 purpose.
Beer was wrongly decided, and its error should not be compounded in derogation of clear text and equally clear congressional purpose. The provision in § 5 barring preclearance of a districting plan portending an abridging effect is unconditional (and just as uncompromising as the bar to plans resting on a purpose to abridge). The Beer Court nonetheless sought to justify the imposition of a nontextual limitation on the forbidden abridging effect to retrogression by relying on a single fragment of legislative history, a statement from a House Report that § 5 would prevent covered jurisdictions from " 'undo[ing] or defeat[ing] the rights recently won' " by blacks. Beer, supra, at 140 (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 91-397, p. 8 (1969)).12 Relying on this one statement, however, was an act of distorting selectivity, for the legislative history is replete with references to the need to block changes in voting practices that would perpetuate existing discrimination and stand in the way of truly nondiscriminatory alternatives. In the House of Representatives, the Judiciary Committee noted that "even after apparent defeat[s] resisters seek new ways and means of discriminating.
12 Section 5 was promulgated by the 89th Congress, but Congress's attention has repeatedly returned to it as the duration of the Voting Rights Act has been extended and the Act has been amended. See, e. g., Bossier Parish I, 520 U. S. 471, 505-506 (1997) (Stevens, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part) (discussing 1982 amendments); Voting Rights Act of 1965, Amendments of 1975, 89 Stat. 400; Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat. 315.
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