Cite as: 532 U. S. 275 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
What makes the Court's analysis even more troubling is that our cases have already adopted a simpler and more sensible model for understanding the relationship between the two sections. For three decades, we have treated § 602 as granting the responsible agencies the power to issue broad prophylactic rules aimed at realizing the vision laid out in § 601, even if the conduct captured by these rules is at times broader than that which would otherwise be prohibited.
In Lau, our first Title VI case, the only three Justices whose understanding of § 601 required them to reach the question explicitly endorsed the power of the agencies to adopt broad prophylactic rules to enforce the aims of the statute. As Justice Stewart explained, regulations promulgated pursuant to § 602 may "go beyond . . . § 601" as long as they are "reasonably related" to its antidiscrimination mandate. 414 U. S., at 571 (Stewart, J., joined by Burger, C. J., and Blackmun, J., concurring in result). In Guardians, at least three Members of the Court adopted a similar understanding of the statute. See 463 U. S., at 643 (Stevens, J., joined by Brennan and Blackmun, JJ., dissenting). Finally, just 16 years ago, our unanimous opinion in Alexander v. Choate, 469 U. S. 287 (1985), treated this understanding of Title VI's structure as settled law. Writing for the Court, Justice Marshall aptly explained the interpretation of § 602's grant of regulatory power that necessarily underlies our prior case law: "In essence, then, we [have] held that Title VI [has] delegated to the agencies in the first instance the complex determination of what sorts of disparate impacts upon minorities constituted sufficiently significant social problems, and [are] readily enough remediable, to warrant altering the practices of the federal grantees that [have] produced those impacts." Id., at 293-294.
This understanding is firmly rooted in the text of Title VI. As § 602 explicitly states, the agencies are authorized to adopt regulations to "effectuate" § 601's antidiscrimination mandate. 42 U. S. C. § 2000d-1. The plain meaning of the
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