364
Opinion of Souter, J.
Barring one contrivance too often has caused no change in result, only in methods," H. R. Rep. No. 439, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 10 (1965), and the House Report described how jurisdictions had used changes in voting practices to stave off reform. By making trifling changes in registration requirements, for example, Dallas County, Alabama, was able to terminate litigation against it without registering more than a handful of minority voters, see id., at 10-11, and new practices were similarly effective devices for perpetuating discrimination in other jurisdictions as well, see S. Rep. No. 162, pt. 3, pp. 8-9 (1965) (Joint Statement of Individual Views by Sens. Dodd, Hart, Long, Kennedy, Bayh, Burdick, Tydings, Dirksen, Hruska, Fong, Scott, and Javits). After losing voting rights cases, jurisdictions would adopt new voting requirements " 'as a means for continuing the rejection of qualified Negro applicants.' " Id., at 12 (quoting United States v. Parker, 236 F. Supp. 511, 517 (MD Ala. 1964)). Thanks to the discriminatory traditions of the jurisdictions covered by § 5, these new practices often avoided retrogression 13 even as they stymied improvements. In the days before § 5, the ongoing litigation would become moot and minority litigants would be back at square one, shouldering the burden of new challenges with the prospect of further dodges to come. Beer, supra, at 152, n. 9 (Marshall, J., dissenting).
The intent of Congress to address the frustration of running to stay in place was manifest when it extended the Voting Rights Act in 1969:
"Prior to the enactment of the 1965 act, new voting rules of various kinds were resorted to in several States in order to perpetuate discrimination in the face of
13 The legislative history did not use the terms "retrogression" and "dilution" to describe discriminatory regimes. In the Voting Rights Act context, the former appears for the first time in a federal case in Beer, 425 U. S., at 141; the latter made its first appearance in Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544 (1969).
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