Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05433/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05433-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 441
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Voting
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 6, 2011 Decided July 8, 2011 

No. 10-5433 

STEPHEN LAROQUE, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED 

STATES, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:10-cv-00561) 

Hashim M. Mooppan argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs were Michael A. Carvin, Noel J. 

Francisco, and Michael E. Rosman. 

Linda F. Thome, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellee. With her on the brief were 

Samuel R. Bagenstos, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 

Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Diana K. Flynn, 

Attorney. James C. Kilbourne, Attorney, entered an 

appearance. 

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J. Gerald Hebert and Arthur Barry Spitzer were on the 

brief for intervenors-appellees. 

Before: ROGERS, TATEL, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: The citizens of Kinston, North 

Carolina, approved a referendum switching city elections 

from partisan to nonpartisan. Because Kinston lies in a 

jurisdiction covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 

1965, the city council had no authority to implement the 

referendum until precleared by federal authorities, and 

preclearance has not occurred. A candidate for public office 

claiming a state-law entitlement to run under the suspended 

nonpartisan system, together with other plaintiffs, filed suit 

seeking to enjoin the Attorney General from enforcing section 

5 against Kinston. Count one of plaintiffs’ complaint contends 

that section 5, as reauthorized in 2006, exceeds Congress’s 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment enforcement powers. 

Count two contends that amendments made to section 5 in 

2006 erect a facially unconstitutional racial-preference 

scheme. The district court dismissed both counts for lack of 

standing and a cause of action. Concluding that one of the 

plaintiffs—the candidate for public office—has both standing 

and a cause of action to pursue count one, we reverse and 

remand for the district court to consider the merits of that 

claim. Because plaintiffs’ standing with respect to count two 

raises complex questions unaddressed by the district court and 

the parties’ briefs, we vacate the district court’s dismissal of 

that claim and remand for further consideration consistent 

with this opinion. 

 

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I. 

“Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the 

broad remedial purpose of ‘rid[ding] the country of racial 

discrimination in voting.’ ” Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 

403 (1991) (alteration in original) (quoting South Carolina v. 

Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 315 (1966)). Section 5, the 

provision at issue in this case, prohibits “covered 

jurisdictions”—those with histories of engaging in such 

discrimination—from implementing any change in “any 

voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, 

practice, or procedure with respect to voting” without first 

obtaining approval from federal authorities. 42 U.S.C. § 

1973c(a); see also id. § 1973b(b) (setting forth the standards 

for determining which jurisdictions shall be subject to section 

5). Commonly referred to as “preclearance,” such approval 

may be obtained in two ways. First, the covered jurisdiction 

may seek a declaratory judgment from a three-judge panel of 

the United States District Court for the District of Columbia 

that the voting change “neither has the purpose nor will have 

the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account 

of race or color.” Id. § 1973c(a). Second, the jurisdiction may 

submit the proposed change for review by the United States 

Attorney General under the same purpose-or-effect test. Id.; 

see also 28 C.F.R. § 51.52(a). If the Attorney General fails to 

object within sixty days, section 5’s preemptive effect ends, 

and the jurisdiction may implement the change. 42 U.S.C. § 

1973c(a). If the Attorney General objects, the jurisdiction 

retains the option of seeking preclearance from a three-judge 

district court, but section 5 prohibits the jurisdiction from 

implementing the change until it obtains a judgment from the 

court that the preclearance requirements are satisfied. Id.; see 

also Morris v. Gressette, 432 U.S. 491, 505 n.21 (1977). 

 

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Originally “expected to be in effect for only five years,” 

section 5 was “reauthorized . . . in 1970 (for 5 years), 1975 

(for 7 years), and 1982 (for 25 years).” Nw. Austin Mun. Util. 

Dist. No. One v. Holder, 129 S. Ct. 2504, 2510 (2009). The 

Supreme Court upheld section 5’s original enactment and 

those three reauthorizations as permissible exercises of 

Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power. See 

Katzenbach, 383 U.S. at 334–35; see also Nw. Austin, 129 S. 

Ct. at 2510. The Court, however, has yet to rule on the 

constitutionality of Congress’s most recent extension, this one 

enacted in 2006. See Nw. Austin, 129 S. Ct. at 2511–13; see 

also Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King 

Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 

2006, Pub. L. No. 109-246, § 4, 120 Stat. 577, 580 

(reauthorizing section 5 for twenty-five years). 

The primary issue in this lawsuit is whether certain 

private parties have standing to challenge the 2006 

reauthorization. To satisfy the minimum standing 

requirements implicit in Article III’s limitation of the federal 

judicial power to actual “Cases” and “Controversies,” U.S. 

Const. art. III, § 2, plaintiffs must establish “an ‘injury in 

fact’—an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) 

concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not 

conjectural or hypothetical,” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 

504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992) (internal footnote, citations, and 

quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, this “injury must be 

fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and 

likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.” Ord v. District 

of Columbia, 587 F.3d 1136, 1140 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

In addition to these minimum constitutional 

requirements, courts have recognized prudential limitations 

on standing not strictly compelled by the Constitution’s text. 

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Most important for our purposes, the Supreme Court has held 

that “even when the plaintiff has alleged injury sufficient to 

meet the ‘case or controversy’ requirement, . . . [he] generally 

must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest 

his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third 

parties.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499 (1975). This 

prudential limitation is meant to avoid “the adjudication of 

rights which those not before the Court may not wish to 

assert” and to ensure “that the most effective advocate of the 

rights at issue is present to champion them.” Duke Power Co. 

v. Carolina Envtl. Study Grp., Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 80 (1978). 

 With this legal background in mind, we turn to the facts 

of the case before us. In a November 2008 referendum, the 

residents of Kinston, North Carolina, voted by an almost twoto-one margin to switch from partisan to nonpartisan elections 

for mayor and city council. Absent section 5, Kinston’s city 

council would have had a duty under North Carolina law to 

amend the city’s charter to implement the referendum. See

N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 160A-104, -108. But since Kinston lies in 

Lenoir County, a covered jurisdiction, it may not implement 

the referendum until precleared by federal authorities. 

 Pursuant to section 5, Kinston submitted the referendum 

to the Attorney General, who, through the Justice 

Department’s Civil Rights Division, objected to the 

referendum in an August 17, 2009, letter. Letter from Loretta 

King, Acting Assistant Att’y Gen., U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 

Civil Rights Div., to James P. Cauley III, Kinston City Att’y 

(Aug. 17, 2009) (included at J.A. 42–44). Although not 

contending that the referendum was infected by a 

discriminatory purpose, the Division concluded that Kinston 

had failed to satisfy its burden of proving that the move to 

nonpartisan elections would have no retrogressive effect on 

the ability of black voters to elect their preferred candidates. 

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See Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130, 141 (1976) (“[T]he 

purpose of [section] 5 has always been to insure that no 

voting-procedure changes would be made that would lead to a 

retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect 

to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.”). The 

Division emphasized that although approximately 65% of 

Kinston’s registered voters are black, “[b]lack voters have had 

limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent 

municipal elections.” Letter from Loretta King to James P. 

Cauley III, supra, at 1–2. According to the Division, “[t]he 

success that [black voters] have achieved has resulted from 

cohesive support for candidates during the Democratic 

primary (where black voters represent a larger percentage of 

the electorate), combined with crossover voting by whites in 

the general election.” Id. at 2. The Division was concerned 

that moving to nonpartisan elections would cause black 

Democratic candidates to lose support from the small number 

of white voters who out of party loyalty have bucked the 

racially polarized voting characteristic of Kinston elections. 

Id. It also noted that black candidates would likely lose 

campaign support and other assistance from the Democratic 

party if the city moved to nonpartisan elections. Id. As a 

result, the Division concluded, “[r]emoving the partisan cue in 

municipal elections [would], in all likelihood, eliminate the 

single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to 

office.” Id. 

 After the city council voted against seeking de novo

review of the referendum by a three-judge district court, 

several Kinston residents who supported the referendum and 

one private membership association filed this suit against the 

Attorney General on April 7, 2010. They sought a declaratory 

judgment that section 5, as reauthorized and amended in 

2006, is unconstitutional, as well as an injunction prohibiting 

the Attorney General from enforcing section 5 against 

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Kinston. The district court permitted six African-American 

residents of Kinston and the North Carolina State Conference 

of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement 

of Colored People to intervene in support of the Attorney 

General. Significantly for the issues before us, neither 

Kinston, nor Lenoir County, nor North Carolina is a party to 

this action. 

Plaintiffs’ complaint contains two counts. Count one 

alleges that in reauthorizing section 5, Congress exceeded its 

power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments 

because the statute “is not a rational, congruent or 

proportional means to enforce [those Amendments’] 

nondiscrimination requirements.” Compl. ¶¶ 33–34. Count 

two contends that as a result of amendments Congress made 

to section 5 in 2006, the section “violates the 

nondiscrimination requirements of the Fifth, Fourteenth and 

Fifteenth Amendments.” Id. ¶ 36. Arguing that plaintiffs 

lacked standing and a cause of action to bring both counts, the 

Attorney General and intervenors moved to dismiss. 

Although the complaint appears to raise facial challenges 

to section 5 and as-applied challenges to the constitutionality 

of the Attorney General’s objection, plaintiffs have since 

made clear that they intend to pursue only their facial 

challenges. See LaRoque v. Holder, 755 F. Supp. 2d 156, 

162–63 (D.D.C. 2010); Appellants’ Opening Br. 9. This 

apparent change in position likely reflects the uncertainty over 

whether courts may ever review the propriety of an Attorney 

General objection under section 5. Expanding on the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Morris v. Gressette, 432 U.S. at 504–05, 

which held that the Attorney General’s failure to object to a 

proposed voting change is unreviewable, three-judge district 

courts have refused to entertain challenges to Attorney 

General objections in declaratory judgment actions initiated 

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by covered jurisdictions. See City of Rome v. United States, 

450 F. Supp. 378, 380–82 (D.D.C. 1978); see also Cnty. 

Council of Sumter Cnty. v. United States, 555 F. Supp. 694, 

706–07 (D.D.C. 1983). In so doing, these courts have 

emphasized that through declaratory judgment actions, 

covered jurisdictions would obtain a de novo judicial 

evaluation of whether they satisfied section 5’s preclearance 

requirements and whether those requirements were 

constitutional. See Sumter Cnty., 555 F. Supp. at 706; City of 

Rome, 450 F. Supp. at 382 n.3. Given plaintiffs’ abandonment 

of their as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of the 

Attorney General’s objection, we have no need to decide 

whether Morris would bar such a challenge where, as here, 

the covered jurisdiction declines to bring a declaratory 

judgment action under section 5 following an Attorney 

General objection. Instead, we need only decide whether 

plaintiffs enjoy standing and have a cause of action to 

challenge the constitutionality of section 5 on its face. 

 

Plaintiffs assert three theories of standing: as candidates 

in Kinston elections, as supporters of the nonpartisan 

referendum, and as Kinston voters. In support of the first 

theory—the most important for purposes of this appeal—the 

complaint alleges that two plaintiffs “intend[] to run for 

election to the Kinston City Council in November of 2011.” 

Compl. ¶¶ 3–4. Moreover, on the very day plaintiffs filed 

their complaint, those two plaintiffs “held a press conference 

to announce [their] candidacies.” Nix Decl. ¶ 7; Northrup 

Decl. ¶ 7. As a registered Republican who would like to run 

as an unaffiliated candidate, Compl. ¶ 3, one of these 

plaintiffs, John Nix (the other potential candidate has since 

decided against running), claims that section 5’s preemption 

of Kinston’s nonpartisan referendum injures him in two ways. 

First, in a system of nonpartisan elections, he could get his 

name on the general-election ballot more cheaply and easily. 

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As Nix explains, “under nonpartisan elections, putative 

candidates need only file a candidacy notice and pay a filing 

fee,” requirements that also apply to partisan elections. 

Appellants’ Opening Br. 6, 19; see also N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 

163-291, -294.2. By contrast, under the partisan regime, 

“candidates must expend additional money and time to win a 

party primary or obtain signatures from 4% of [qualified] 

voters.” Appellants’ Opening Br. 6–7; see also N.C. Gen. 

Stat. §§ 163-291, -296. Second, Nix argues that “the chances 

of victory for non-Democratic candidates” such as himself 

“would substantially improve” in nonpartisan elections 

because “Democratic candidates would lose the benefit of 

party-line straight-ticket voting and other strategic advantages 

stemming from their overwhelming registered-voter 

advantage.” Appellants’ Opening Br. 7. 

In granting the motions to dismiss, the district court 

raised several concerns about Nix’s standing as a candidate in 

the 2011 election. For one thing, it doubted that Nix had 

sufficiently alleged injuries that were “ ‘actual or imminent, 

not conjectural or hypothetical.’ ” LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d 

at 174 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). According to the 

district court, Nix’s allegation in the April 2010 complaint 

that he “intend[ed] to run for election to the Kinston City 

Council in November of 2011,” Compl. ¶ 3, was insufficient 

to justify an inference that Nix actually would run in the 2011 

election and thus incur the injuries alleged to flow from 

Kinston’s partisan-elections system, see LaRoque, 755 F. 

Supp. 2d at 173–75. Although acknowledging that Nix had 

filed an affidavit discussing activities he had taken in support 

of his candidacy, the district court refused to consider any 

post-complaint activities because “ ‘[t]he existence of federal 

jurisdiction . . . depends on the facts as they exist when the 

complaint is filed.’ ” Id. at 174 (alteration in original) (quoting 

Lujan, 504 U.S. at 569 n.4). 

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The district court also doubted that Nix had alleged the 

invasion of “ ‘legally protected interest[s],’ as required to 

establish a constitutional injury in fact.” Id. at 175 (alteration 

in original) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). This doubt 

stemmed from the uncontroverted proposition that Kinston’s 

partisan-elections system is constitutionally permissible under 

the Supreme Court’s decision in Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 

431, 432 (1971), which rejected First Amendment and Equal 

Protection Clause challenges to a Georgia law prohibiting a 

candidate’s name from being printed on the general-election 

ballot unless she either won a party primary or obtained the 

signatures of “at least 5% of the number of registered voters 

at the last general election for the office in question.” Given 

Jenness, the district court reasoned, Nix was unable to satisfy 

his burden of establishing that section 5 either conferred an 

“assertedly illegal benefit” to his campaign opponents or 

subjected him to an “allegedly unlawful ballot access 

requirement[].” LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d at 177, 179 

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

Ultimately, however, the district court concluded it had 

no need to resolve whether Nix had alleged actual or 

imminent injury in fact since it believed that Nix was unable 

to show that any such injury would likely be redressed 

through a decision striking down section 5. See id. at 179–80, 

182–83. The court grounded this conclusion on its 

determination that the Attorney General’s objection nullified 

Kinston’s referendum. See id. at 182 (“Kinston’s nonpartisan 

referendum has not been held in abeyance as a result of the 

Attorney General’s objection; it has been nullified.”). Even if 

it invalidated section 5, the court reasoned, the referendum 

“would remain nullified[] and would need to be re-passed by 

Kinston voters in order to have any legal effect.” Id. at 183.

Having no way of knowing how the referendum would fare 

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with voters the second time around, the court concluded that 

Nix could not “establish ‘redressability’ as required by Article 

III.” Id. According to the district court, this redressability 

problem, along with several additional concerns, also doomed 

plaintiffs’ other two standing theories—that they had standing 

as proponents of the November 2008 referendum and as 

voters in Kinston elections. See id. at 169–73, 180–83. 

Two additional aspects of the district court’s decision are 

relevant to the issues we face. First, although concluding that 

plaintiffs lacked standing, the district court rejected the 

Attorney General’s contention that they were unable to show 

that their alleged injuries were fairly traceable to his 

enforcement of section 5. According to the district court, the 

complaint’s allegations were sufficient to establish causation 

because “the Attorney General’s refusal to grant preclearance 

to Kinston’s proposed change to nonpartisan elections was a 

‘but for’ cause of plaintiffs’ alleged injur[ies].” Id. at 182. 

Second, the district court explained that even if plaintiffs 

had standing, it would nonetheless dismiss their complaint 

under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) because they 

lacked a viable cause of action. Reasoning that plaintiffs’ 

injuries—and thus their claims for relief—flowed only from 

the Attorney General’s objection, the district court believed 

that plaintiffs’ claims necessarily required them to challenge 

that objection. But according to the district court, Morris and 

its progeny barred judicial review of Attorney General 

objections, thus depriving plaintiffs of a cause of action. See 

id. at 163, 183–87. 

Plaintiffs now appeal. We review de novo the district 

court’s dismissal for lack of standing and failure to state a 

claim upon which relief can be granted. See Muir v. Navy 

Fed. Credit Union, 529 F.3d 1100, 1105 (D.C. Cir. 2008); 

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Stewart v. Nat’l Educ. Ass’n, 471 F.3d 169, 173 (D.C. Cir. 

2006). At this stage of the litigation, we “must accept as true 

all material allegations of the complaint,” drawing all 

reasonable inferences from those allegations in plaintiffs’ 

favor, Warth, 422 U.S. at 501, and “presum[ing] that general 

allegations embrace those specific facts that are necessary to 

support the claim,” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). And in assessing plaintiffs’ standing, we must 

assume they will prevail on the merits of their constitutional 

claims. See Muir, 529 F.3d at 1105 (“In reviewing the 

standing question, the court must be careful not to decide the 

questions on the merits for or against the plaintiff, and must 

therefore assume that on the merits the plaintiffs would be 

successful in their claims.” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)). But see Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. 

Mukasey, 573 F. Supp. 2d 221, 235–82 (D.D.C. 2008) 

(upholding the constitutionality of Congress’s 2006 

reauthorization of section 5), rev’d on other grounds, 129 S. 

Ct. 2504 (2009). 

II.

 We begin with the question of whether plaintiffs have 

standing and a cause of action to pursue the claim, raised in 

count one, that in reauthorizing section 5 Congress exceeded 

its Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment enforcement powers. 

Article III Standing 

As explained above, to satisfy the “irreducible 

constitutional minimum of standing” implicit in Article III’s 

case-or-controversy requirement, plaintiffs must establish an 

“injury in fact” fairly traceable to the Attorney General’s 

enforcement of section 5 and redressable by a decision 

striking down that statute. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). Starting with the first of these 

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requirements—injury-in-fact—we conclude that plaintiff John 

Nix has sufficiently alleged that he is at risk of suffering 

“concrete and particularized” injuries to two judicially 

cognizable interests. Id. at 560. First, the partisan-elections 

regime makes the process of getting on the general-election 

ballot more costly and time consuming. As Nix argues, courts 

have recognized that “[s]uch ballot-access requirements 

impose an ‘injury-in-fact,’ not only because non-compliance 

prevents ‘candidates’ from ‘appear[ing] on the . . . ballot,’ but 

also because even compliance requires ‘significant amounts 

of time, money, personnel, and energy,’ which are limited 

‘campaign resources’ that could have been ‘allocate[d]’ 

elsewhere.” Appellants’ Opening Br. 19–20 (second and third 

alterations in original) (quoting Krislov v. Rednour, 226 F.3d 

851, 856–58 (7th Cir. 2000)); see also Storer v. Brown, 415 

U.S. 724, 738 n.9 (1974) (holding that candidates had “ample 

standing” to challenge ballot-access requirements). Second, 

Nix alleges that Kinston’s partisan-elections system injures 

him by providing a competitive advantage to his Democratic 

opponents, who enjoy benefits from straight-ticket voting and 

party loyalty that would largely evaporate in a nonpartisan 

system, and we have held that such competitive injuries in the 

electoral arena can confer Article III standing. See Shays v. 

FEC, 414 F.3d 76, 85–87 (D.C. Cir. 2005). 

 Although the district court doubted that either of these 

injuries involved the invasion of a “legally protected” interest, 

LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d at 179 (internal quotation marks 

omitted), the Attorney General does not press that argument 

on appeal, and for good reason. The very foundation for Nix’s 

claims is that he has a “legally protected” interest under North 

Carolina law in having the nonpartisan referendum 

implemented by Kinston’s city council, and according to Nix, 

the only barrier to the vindication of this interest is section 5, 

which he claims is unconstitutional and thus void. Courts 

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have “long recognized” that legislatures “may enact statutes 

creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing, 

even though no injury would exist without the statute.” Shays, 

414 F.3d at 89 (internal quotation marks omitted). We thus 

disagree with the district court that because Kinston’s 

partisan-elections system is constitutionally permissible under 

the Supreme Court’s decision in Jenness, Nix cannot establish 

a judicially cognizable injury. See Parker v. District of 

Columbia, 478 F.3d 370, 377 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (noting that the 

Supreme Court has used the phrases “legally protected 

interest” and “cognizable interest” interchangeably). 

Kinston’s residents could have voted to retain partisan 

elections, but since they chose otherwise, Nix has a 

cognizable interest in reaping the benefits he claims would 

flow from the nonpartisan system. 

 On appeal, the Attorney General takes a different tack 

than the district court, arguing that Nix’s alleged harms are 

too “abstract, contingent, and speculative” to support 

standing. Att’y Gen.’s Br. 22. Although conceding that the 

nonpartisan system might “provide Nix easier access to the 

general election ballot,” the Attorney General suggests that 

the system might “impede [Nix’s] ultimate electoral success

by ensuring that he will face a larger number of competitors 

in the general election than he would in a partisan system.” Id. 

at 32. But the Attorney General cites no support for the 

proposition that Nix’s standing can be defeated by the 

possibility that the partisan system, though imposing greater 

ballot-access costs, might ultimately improve Nix’s chances 

of electoral success by limiting competition in the general 

election. Indeed, the argument runs contrary to our decision in 

Shays, which drew on case law regarding “procedural” 

injuries in holding that candidates may have standing to 

challenge “illegally structured” campaign environments even 

if “the multiplicity of factors bearing on elections” prevents 

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them from establishing “with any certainty that the challenged 

rules will disadvantage their . . . campaigns.” 414 F.3d at 90–

91 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also 

Lujan, 504 U.S. at 572 n.7 (“The person who has been 

accorded a procedural right to protect his concrete interests 

can assert that right without meeting all the normal standards 

for redressability and immediacy.”). Nix argues that he is 

being forced to compete in an “illegally structured” 

environment because the threat of the Attorney General’s 

enforcement of section 5, which he claims—and we must 

assume—is unconstitutional, is preventing the Kinston city 

council from carrying out its state-law duty to implement the 

nonpartisan referendum. Given this, our holding in Shays 

means that Nix has no obligation to demonstrate definitively 

that he has less chance of victory under the partisan than the 

nonpartisan system. 

 Even if we take the Attorney General’s argument on its 

own terms, however, Nix’s allegation that partisan elections 

will “substantially harm[] [his] chances for election by . . . 

making party affiliation a factor in voter[s’] choices,” Compl. 

¶ 28, is far from “speculative,” Att’y Gen.’s Br. 32 n.8. Just 

look at the Civil Rights Division’s objection letter. The 

Division refused to preclear the nonpartisan system because it 

worried that black Democratic candidates would suffer from 

the loss of the electoral benefits associated with party loyalty 

and straight-ticket voting. The Attorney General’s contention 

that this reasoning “says nothing about the chances of any 

particular Republican candidate in any particular election” is 

simply wrong. Id. After all, the Division’s letter does say 

something: it says that Democratic candidates in Kinston tend 

to receive some votes that they would otherwise not receive 

absent their party affiliation. True, a particular nonDemocratic candidate might be able to overcome this 

disadvantage based on “factors specific to the candidate, his 

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or her opponents, the issues salient to the electorate at the 

time of the election, and mobilization and turnout.” Id. But 

that does not change the fact that, all other things being equal, 

the Democratic label in Kinston tends to benefit Democratic 

candidates and thus disadvantage their opponents. 

 Given all this, we think it clear that Nix would have 

easily satisfied all elements of the injury-in-fact requirement 

had plaintiffs waited to file their complaint until Nix’s 

campaign was well under way and he had begun collecting 

signatures to appear on the general-election ballot as an 

unaffiliated candidate. At that point, there would have been 

no doubt that his injury was “actual” because he would have 

been incurring the ballot-access costs associated with partisan 

elections. In addition, he might have been able to allege that 

he was currently incurring competitive injury since he was 

devoting special resources to counteract the partisan 

advantage his Democratic opponent would enjoy in the 

general election. The only question, then, is whether, as the 

district court found, plaintiffs’ filing of their complaint while 

Nix’s campaign was still in its infancy destroys his standing 

because it undermines the “imminence” of the injuries he 

alleges. We think not. 

 In the April 2010 complaint, Nix alleged that he 

“intend[ed] to run for election to the Kinston City Council in 

November of 2011,” Compl. ¶ 3, and on the same day 

plaintiffs filed their complaint, he held a press conference 

announcing his candidacy, Nix Decl. ¶ 7; see also Haase v. 

Sessions, 835 F.2d 902, 907 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (noting that a 

plaintiff “can freely augment his pleadings with affidavits,” 

such as the affidavit Nix filed discussing, among other things, 

his press conference, to establish the plaintiff’s standing). The 

district court nonetheless appears to have been concerned that 

since Nix had “never before held office” and at the time of the 

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17 

complaint had taken few steps to establish his candidacy, 

LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d at 175, the risk he would change 

his mind was unacceptably high, thus raising the possibility 

that the court would end up “render[ing] an advisory opinion 

in ‘a case in which no injury would have occurred at all,’ ” 

Animal Legal Def. Fund, Inc. v. Espy, 23 F.3d 496, 500 (D.C. 

Cir. 1994) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 564 n.2). But when 

plaintiffs filed their complaint, the election in which Nix 

planned to run was only nineteen months away, a far cry from 

the more than four-year gap that sank Senator Mitch 

McConnell’s standing in McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93, 

225–26 (2003) (holding that Senator McConnell lacked 

standing to challenge a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign 

Reform Act of 2002 (“BCRA”) that at earliest would have 

affected him in his 2008 reelection campaign), overruled on 

other grounds by Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876 

(2010). In our view, Nix’s allegation that he intended to run in 

the November 2011 election and his public announcement at 

the press conference sufficiently establish the “substantial 

probability” of imminent injury required for Article III 

standing. Chamber of Commerce v. EPA, No. 09-1237, 2011 

WL 1601753, at *6 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 29, 2011) (internal 

quotation marks omitted); cf. Shays, 414 F.3d at 92 (holding 

that incumbent congressmen subject to two-year election 

cycles had standing to challenge the FEC’s implementation of 

certain provisions of BCRA). 

 Indeed, as Nix argues, a contrary holding “would place 

courts and candidates in an untenable position.” Appellants’ 

Opening Br. 31. While federal litigation can take months, 

even years, Nix contends, and neither the Attorney General 

nor intervenors dispute, that campaigns for local offices rarely 

span multiple years. See Burlington N. R.R. Co. v. STB, 75 

F.3d 685, 689–90 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (noting that since federal 

litigation often takes at least two years to resolve, agency 

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18 

orders “of less than two years’ duration ordinarily evade 

review” for purposes of the “capable of repetition, yet evading 

review” exception to mootness (internal quotation marks 

omitted)); see also Appellants’ Opening Br. 31–32 (“[M]ost 

political campaigns do not begin two years before the 

election, and especially not campaigns for local offices by 

novice candidates.”); Nix Decl. ¶ 10 (stating that Nix would 

not begin gathering signatures to appear on the generalelection ballot as an unaffiliated candidate until September 

23, 2010, “because signatures are due on September 23, 2011, 

and are only valid for a year”). As a result, were we to agree 

with the district court that Nix lacked standing to sue because 

his campaign was still at an early stage when plaintiffs filed 

their complaint, we would essentially require novice political 

candidates like Nix either (1) to waste resources by 

accelerating their campaigns to confirm their standing, or (2) 

to delay suing until the eve of election, thus injecting 

uncertainty into campaigning and imposing burdens on the 

courts by requiring them to expedite the litigation. Nothing in 

Article III requires us to impose such an undesirable set of 

options on candidates and courts. Given our conclusion that 

Nix’s concrete plan to run in the November 2011 election 

suffices to establish the imminence of his alleged injuries, we 

have no need to reach plaintiffs’ alternative argument that the 

district court should have considered activities described in 

Nix’s affidavit occurring after the date the complaint was 

filed. 

 Turning to the issue of causation, we agree with Nix that 

his alleged injuries are fairly traceable to the Attorney 

General’s insistence on enforcing section 5’s preclearance 

requirement. Absent section 5 and the threat that the Attorney 

General would enforce it by, for example, seeking to enjoin 

any attempted implementation of a non-precleared election 

change, see 42 U.S.C. § 1973j(d); Allen v. State Bd. of 

USCA Case #10-5433 Document #1317452 Filed: 07/08/2011 Page 18 of 32
19 

Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 561 (1969), there is no reason to 

doubt that the Kinston city council would carry out its statelaw duty to implement the referendum, see Nat’l Wrestling 

Coaches Ass’n v. Dep’t of Educ., 366 F.3d 930, 941 (D.C. 

Cir. 2004) (noting that a plaintiff is not deprived of standing 

by the possibility that a third party might take “the 

extraordinary measure of continuing [its] injurious conduct in 

violation of the law”). 

 Against this reasoning, the Attorney General presents two 

arguments. First, relying on the Supreme Court’s holding in 

McConnell that political candidates were unable to claim 

competitive injury from increased campaign-contribution 

limits because the candidates, like their competitors, could 

take advantage of the increases, the Attorney General 

contends that Nix lacks standing because his alleged injuries 

are traceable not to the Attorney General’s insistence on 

enforcing section 5 but instead to Nix’s “personal choice.” 

McConnell, 540 U.S. at 228. According to the Attorney 

General, since Kinston’s current election system permits Nix 

to “choose whether to run for office as either a partisan or a 

nonpartisan candidate,” any “disadvantages he may suffer as a 

result of that choice are caused by his own action, not the 

operation of Section 5, the Attorney General’s objection, or 

Kinston’s election system.” Att’y Gen.’s Br. 38. We disagree. 

Unlike the candidates in McConnell, who could cure their 

“fundraising disadvantage” by exploiting BCRA’s increased 

contribution limits, McConnell, 540 U.S. at 228 (internal 

quotation marks omitted), Nix could avoid the ballot-access 

costs associated with Kinston’s partisan-elections system only 

by abandoning his aspiration of appearing on the generalelection ballot. This option, however, is available to all 

candidates challenging ballot-access requirements, yet that 

has hardly stopped the Supreme Court from holding that 

political candidates have “ample standing” to bring such 

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20 

challenges. Storer, 415 U.S. at 738 n.9. Similarly, Nix could 

avoid the alleged electoral disadvantages of the partisan 

system only by running as a Democrat. But given Nix’s First 

Amendment right to freedom of association, that option 

cannot possibly provide a basis for depriving him of standing. 

See Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 30 (1968) (explaining 

that the First Amendment protects “the right of individuals to 

associate for the advancement of political beliefs”); see also 

Storer, 415 U.S. at 738 n.9, 745–46 (holding that candidates 

had standing to challenge requirements for appearing on the 

general-election ballot as independents even though they 

could have chosen to run in a party primary). 

 As a second line of defense, the Attorney General argues 

that since Kinston’s city council declined to seek a 

declaratory judgment that the change to nonpartisan elections 

had neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory 

effect, “Kinston’s decision to continue its partisan election 

system was . . . ‘the independent action of [a] third party not 

before the court,’ that is, the City of Kinston.” Att’y Gen.’s 

Br. 39 (alteration in original) (internal citation omitted) 

(quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). This argument also fails. As 

an initial matter, case law makes clear that private parties who 

otherwise satisfy the requirements for standing may challenge 

federal preemption of state actions even if state officials have 

abandoned their legal challenges. See, e.g., Schulz v. 

Williams, 44 F.3d 48, 52–53 (2d Cir. 1994) (holding that a 

political party chairman had standing to appeal a district court 

decision striking down state election laws even though the 

state board of elections had decided against appealing). 

Furthermore, although causation and redressability are 

“ordinarily ‘substantially more difficult’ to establish” where, 

as here, a plaintiff challenges the government’s regulation of a 

third party (i.e., the City of Kinston), Lujan, 504 U.S. at 562 

(quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 758 (1984)), this is no 

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21 

ordinary case. As we have held, a party may have “standing to 

challenge government action that permits or authorizes thirdparty conduct that would otherwise be illegal in the absence 

of the Government’s action”—precisely what Nix seeks to do. 

Nat’l Wrestling Coaches Ass’n, 366 F.3d at 940. He alleges 

that absent section 5, the Kinston city council would have a 

state-law duty to implement the voter referendum—an 

interpretation of North Carolina law that neither the Attorney 

General nor intervenors challenge. See N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 

160A-104, -108. Nix’s alleged injuries are thus fairly 

traceable to the Attorney General “because the intervening 

choices of” the Kinston city council “are not truly 

independent of” the Attorney General’s insistence on 

enforcing section 5. Nat’l Wrestling Coaches Ass’n, 366 F.3d 

at 940–41. 

 Moving on to redressability, the Attorney General wisely 

refrains from defending the district court’s holding that even 

if Nix satisfies the other requirements for Article III standing, 

his alleged injuries would not be redressed by a judgment 

declaring section 5 unconstitutional and enjoining the 

Attorney General from enforcing it. The premise underlying 

this conclusion—that the Attorney General’s objection 

“nullified” Kinston’s referendum, LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d 

at 182–83—suffers from two flaws. First, it misconstrues 

section 5. That statute provides that “no person shall be 

denied the right to vote for failure to comply” with a new 

electoral law “unless and until” the law is precleared by either 

the Attorney General or the District Court for the District of 

Columbia. 42 U.S.C. § 1973c(a). By objecting to an electoral 

change, the Attorney General in no way nullifies the proposed 

change. Instead, he simply fails “to . . . end” section 5’s 

“postpon[ement]” of “the implementation” of that change. 

Morris, 432 U.S. at 504; see also Nw. Austin, 129 S. Ct. at 

2511 (“Section 5 . . . suspend[s] all changes to state election 

USCA Case #10-5433 Document #1317452 Filed: 07/08/2011 Page 21 of 32
22 

law . . . until they have been precleared by federal authorities . 

. . .”). As Nix points out, if Attorney General objections 

nullified proposed electoral changes, then even covered 

jurisdictions would lack standing to challenge section 5’s 

constitutionality after receiving such objections. See 

Appellants’ Opening Br. 41. That, however, would conflict 

with the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Rome v. United 

States, 446 U.S. 156, 161–62, 173–83 (1980), which reached 

the merits of constitutional challenges raised by a covered 

jurisdiction whose electoral changes the Attorney General had 

refused to preclear. 

 Second, the district court’s analysis overlooks the fact 

that if, as Nix alleges, section 5 is unconstitutional, the 

Attorney General’s actions pursuant to that unconstitutional 

statute would be void. And the general rule is “that a void act 

cannot operate to repeal a valid existing statute,” meaning that 

the existing statute “remains in full force and operation as if 

the repeal had never been attempted.” Conlon v. Adamski, 77 

F.2d 397, 399 (D.C. Cir. 1935). This rule is well illustrated by 

the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. City of New York, 

524 U.S. 417 (1998), which held unconstitutional the Line 

Item Veto Act. Under the district court’s reasoning in the case 

before us, plaintiffs in Clinton would have lacked standing 

because the President’s cancellation of the budgetary 

provisions at issue in that case would have “nullified” those 

provisions despite the unconstitutionality of his actions. Yet 

the Supreme Court squarely held that plaintiffs had standing 

because the budgetary provisions the President had 

purportedly canceled would have benefitted them. See id. at 

429–36. The Court nowhere suggested that Congress would 

have to re-pass the canceled provisions for them to be 

operative. Likewise here—the Attorney General’s ultra vires

action under an allegedly unconstitutional federal statute 

could hardly deprive Nix of standing. 

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23 

In sum, a judgment declaring section 5 unconstitutional 

would remove the federal barrier to the implementation of the 

nonpartisan referendum, and absent that barrier, there is no 

reason to believe that the Kinston city council would refrain 

from carrying out its state-law duty to put the referendum, 

which the Attorney General’s objection did not and could not 

nullify, into effect. As a result, Nix has established that his 

alleged injuries would likely be redressed by a decision in his 

favor. 

Prudential Standing 

Having concluded that Nix satisfies all the prerequisites 

for Article III standing with respect to count one, we turn to 

the Attorney General’s contention that Nix nonetheless lacks 

prudential standing to assert the rights of the City of Kinston 

and the State of North Carolina against federal interference 

“with a specific aspect of state sovereignty”—i.e., control 

over municipal elections. Att’y Gen.’s Br. 39–40 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). In support, the Attorney General 

relies on the prudential principle, discussed above, that “even 

when [a] plaintiff has alleged injury sufficient to meet the 

‘case or controversy’ requirement, . . . the plaintiff generally 

must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest 

his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third 

parties.” Warth, 422 U.S. at 499. 

The Attorney General’s argument, however, is foreclosed 

by Bond v. United States, No. 09-1227 (U.S. June 16, 2011), 

which the Supreme Court issued following oral argument in 

this case. In Bond, the Court held that a criminal defendant 

charged with attempting to poison her husband’s paramour 

had standing to challenge the federal statute under which she 

was indicted on the grounds “that, by enacting it, Congress 

exceeded its powers under the Constitution, thus intruding 

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upon the sovereignty and authority of the States.” Id. at 1. The 

Court reiterated that our federal system’s allocation of power 

between the national government and the states is meant to 

protect not only “the integrity, dignity, and residual 

sovereignty of the [s]tates,” but also “individual liberty.” Id.

at 9; see also New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 181 

(1992) (“[T]he Constitution divides authority between federal 

and state governments for the protection of individuals.”). As 

a result, where, as here, an individual “is a party to an 

otherwise justiciable case or controversy, [he] is not forbidden 

to object that [his] injury results from disregard of the federal 

structure of our Government.” Bond, No. 09-1227, slip op. at 

13–14; see also id. at 10 (“Fidelity to principles of federalism 

is not for the States alone to vindicate.”). Of course, a litigant 

is in no way freed from familiar constitutional and prudential 

standing requirements merely because he challenges a law 

that he claims “upset[s] the constitutional balance between the 

National Government and the States.” Id. at 10, 13. Certainly, 

if Nix lacked a concrete, particularized, redressable injury and 

was instead seeking only to vindicate “the right, possessed by 

every citizen, to require that the Government be administered 

according to law,” he would have no standing to challenge 

section 5. Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for 

Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 482–83 

(1982) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Bond, No. 

09-1227, slip op. at 13. But since Nix otherwise satisfies the 

requirements for standing, he may through this lawsuit pursue 

his “direct interest” in the invalidation of a statute that he 

contends exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers and thus 

endangers the liberty-protecting structure of our federal 

system. Bond, No. 09-1227, slip op. at 10. 

 Given our conclusion that Nix has both Article III and 

prudential standing to argue that Congress’s 2006 

reauthorization of section 5 exceeded its Fourteenth and 

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25 

Fifteenth Amendment enforcement powers, and given that 

Nix and the other plaintiffs all rely on the same arguments 

against section 5’s constitutionality, we have no need to 

decide whether those other plaintiffs also have standing to 

raise the claim asserted in count one. See Comcast Corp. v. 

FCC, 579 F.3d 1, 6 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (“[I]f one party has 

standing in an action, a court need not reach the issue of the 

standing of other parties when it makes no difference to the 

merits of the case.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We 

thus turn to the question of whether Nix has a cause of action 

to pursue that claim. 

Cause of Action 

Neither the Attorney General nor intervenors contest 

Nix’s argument that courts may recognize nonstatutory causes 

of action for private parties to seek declaratory and injunctive 

relief against the enforcement of statutes that allegedly 

venture beyond the bounds of Congress’s enumerated powers. 

This implicit concession of the validity of Nix’s argument 

makes sense given the Supreme Court’s recent decision in 

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight 

Board, 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3151 n.2 (2010), which recognized a 

nonstatutory cause of action for an accounting firm to seek 

declaratory and injunctive relief against the Public Company 

Accounting Oversight Board on the grounds that the statute 

creating the Board violated the Appointments Clause and 

impermissibly encroached on the President’s authority to 

remove Executive Branch officials. Although the case before 

us involves the separation of powers between the federal 

government, on the one hand, and the states and the people, 

on the other, instead of between Congress and the President, 

we fail to see why a different result would be required merely 

because vertical rather than horizontal separation of powers is 

at issue. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 458 (1991) 

(analogizing between “the separation and independence of the 

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26 

coordinate branches of the Federal Government” and the 

“balance of power between the States and the Federal 

Government”); see also Bond, No. 09-1227, slip op. at 10–12 

(relying on the same analogy in holding that a litigant who 

otherwise satisfies the requirements for standing may 

“challenge a law as enacted in contravention of constitutional 

principles of federalism”). 

 The only question, then, is whether the Attorney General 

and the district court are correct that Nix has no nonstatutory 

cause of action because his claim necessarily requires judicial 

review of the Attorney General’s objection, which case law 

suggests might be unreviewable under any circumstances. See 

supra pp. 7–8 (discussing Morris and related precedent). As 

the Attorney General acknowledged at oral argument, 

however, Nix and the other plaintiffs have made it abundantly 

clear that they have no intention of challenging that objection.

See Oral Arg. Tr. at 32:15–33:7. To the contrary, although 

their complaint seems to raise both as-applied and facial 

challenges to section 5, plaintiffs have repeatedly confirmed 

that they are now arguing only that section 5, as reauthorized 

in 2006, is facially unconstitutional. See, e.g., Appellants’ 

Opening Br. 9. According to plaintiffs, their injuries flow not 

from the Attorney General’s objection, but rather from section 

5’s allegedly unconstitutional preemption of voting changes 

that have failed to receive preclearance. True, the Attorney 

General could have terminated section 5’s preemption of the 

nonpartisan referendum by preclearing it. But we agree with 

plaintiffs that “[n]either law nor logic requires [them] to 

challenge the Attorney General’s failure to alleviate the 

statutorily imposed injury[] in order to challenge Congress’ 

infliction of that injury in the first place.” Id. at 45–46. 

Because section 5 is preventing the Kinston city council 

from carrying out its state-law duty to implement the 

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27 

nonpartisan referendum, Nix has both standing and a cause of 

action to seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the 

Attorney General—the Executive Branch official charged 

with enforcing section 5—on the grounds that the provision 

exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers. 

III.

This brings us finally to whether plaintiffs have standing 

to assert the equal protection challenge raised in count two. 

Even if the 2006 reauthorization of section 5 as a whole did 

not exceed Congress’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment 

enforcement powers, plaintiffs allege, the addition of 

subsections (b)–(d) to section 5 “transform[ed]” the provision 

into an unconstitutional “race-based minority-entitlement 

scheme.” Pls.’ Mem. in Opp’n to Def.’s Mot. to Dismiss 1, 

July 1, 2010. 

Congress added two of these subsections, (b) and (d), in 

response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Georgia v. 

Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 480 (2003), which held that in 

determining whether a proposed electoral change has a 

retrogressive effect, federal authorities should not focus solely 

on whether the change reduces minorities’ ability to elect 

their preferred candidates. See H.R. Rep. No. 109-478, at 68–

72 (2006). Instead, the Court ruled, they should consider “the 

totality of the circumstances” and especially whether a plan 

that decreases minorities’ ability to elect their preferred 

candidates in some districts has the offsetting benefit of 

increasing their political influence in other districts. See 

Georgia, 539 U.S. at 480–85. Essentially overruling Georgia 

v. Ashcroft, Congress added subsections (b) and (d) to section 

5, which make clear that the section 5 inquiry should focus on 

whether the proposed change “has the purpose of or will have 

the effect of diminishing the ability of any citizens of the 

United States on account of race or color . . . to elect their 

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preferred candidates of choice.” 42 U.S.C. § 1973c(b); see 

also id. § 1973c(d) (“The purpose of subsection (b) . . . is to 

protect the ability of such citizens to elect their preferred 

candidates of choice.”). According to plaintiffs, these 

amendments establish an unconstitutional “floor for minority 

electoral success in all covered jurisdictions until 2031, 

regardless of whether minorities in those jurisdictions have an 

equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates or to 

participate in the political process under the voting change, 

and regardless of whether there are compelling reasons 

supporting the voting change.” Compl. ¶ 25. 

Congress added the other challenged amendment, 

subsection (c), in response to another Supreme Court 

decision, Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board, 528 U.S. 320 

(2000). See H.R. Rep. No. 109-478, at 66–68. In that case, the 

Court held that nothing in section 5 “prohibit[s] preclearance 

of a redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but 

nonretrogressive purpose.” Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. at 341. 

In other words, the Court ruled that section 5 permits 

preclearance of an electoral provision that, though motivated 

by racial animus, has neither the purpose nor the effect of 

reducing minorities’ current electoral power. Congress 

effectively overruled this holding by adding subsection (c), 

which provides that the term “purpose” in section 5 means 

“any discriminatory purpose.” 42 U.S.C. § 1973c(c). Given 

the Justice Department’s alleged history of objecting to voting 

changes that fail to “increase minority-preferred candidates’ 

success to the maximum practicable extent,” plaintiffs claim 

that subsection (c) constitutes “an implicit command for 

covered jurisdictions to engage in race-based voting practices 

and procedures” to maximize minorities’ electoral strength. 

Compl. ¶ 26. 

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29 

 Significantly, plaintiffs do not contest the 

constitutionality of the pre-2006 preclearance standards 

articulated in Georgia v. Ashcroft and Bossier Parish. Instead, 

they challenge only Congress’s “substantive expansion of the 

preclearance standard” through the addition of subsections 

(b)–(d). Appellants’ Opening Br. 8 (emphasis in original 

removed). 

 Plaintiffs’ standing to raise the equal-protection claim 

asserted in count two receives relatively little attention in both 

the district court’s opinion and the parties’ appellate briefs. As 

a result, many questions relevant to this very difficult issue 

remain unaddressed, or at least have yet to be addressed in a 

manner commensurate with their complexity. 

 For example, plaintiffs allege that they have been injured 

by section 5’s “ ‘postpon[ement] [of] the implementation of 

[the] validly enacted [referendum]’ in furtherance of 

Congress’ minority-preferring regime.” Appellants’ Reply Br. 

30 (third and fourth alterations in original) (quoting Morris, 

432 U.S. at 504). But section 5’s preemptive provision 

appears in subsection (a), not subsections (b)–(d), thus 

presenting the following questions: even were we to declare 

subsections (b)–(d) unconstitutional, would we sever and 

strike down only those subsections, leaving subsection (a) 

untouched? And if so, what would happen to the Kinston 

referendum and the Attorney General’s decision to refuse 

preclearance, given that the preemption and the preclearance 

decision both occurred under a statutory scheme that included 

the allegedly defective subsections (b)–(d)? See Advantage 

Media, L.L.C. v. City of Eden Prairie, 456 F.3d 793, 801 (8th 

Cir. 2006) (relying on INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 931–36 

(1983), in holding that severability can be relevant to the issue 

of standing). 

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30 

 These questions are complicated by the fact that only 

Kinston and its officials, not plaintiffs, are authorized to 

submit electoral changes for preclearance. See 42 U.S.C. § 

1973c(a); 28 C.F.R. § 51.23. So far, Kinston has neither 

joined this lawsuit nor exercised its right to request 

reconsideration of the Attorney General’s objection. See 28 

C.F.R. § 51.45. So what is the remedy the plaintiffs seek with 

respect to count two, and does the redressability of their 

alleged injuries depend on whether Kinston will seek 

reconsideration of the Attorney General’s preclearance 

decision? See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 562 (“[W]hen the plaintiff is 

not himself the object of the government action or inaction he 

challenges, standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily 

substantially more difficult to establish.” (internal quotation 

marks omitted)). Given these considerations, can plaintiffs 

satisfy the causation and redressability requirements of 

Article III standing with respect to count two? 

 Another question is whether, as the district court 

believed, see LaRoque, 755 F. Supp. 2d at 185–87, and as the 

Attorney General argues on appeal, Att’y Gen.’s Br. 46, 

plaintiffs’ count-two claim requires review of the Attorney 

General’s objection—something plaintiffs disclaim any 

intention of seeking given their fear of running afoul of 

Morris and its progeny. If the answer is no—because 

plaintiffs are bringing only a facial challenge, see Appellants’ 

Reply Br. 30—then have they met the requirement that 

litigants claiming injury from a racial classification establish 

that they “personally [have been] denied equal treatment by 

the challenged discriminatory conduct”? United States v. 

Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 743–44 (1995) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). 

 Without meaningful briefing on these issues, we are 

hesitant to decide plaintiffs’ count-two standing. Of course, 

USCA Case #10-5433 Document #1317452 Filed: 07/08/2011 Page 30 of 32
31 

we could ask for additional briefing. But that would take time, 

and as plaintiffs’ repeated requests for us to expedite this 

litigation so that it can be resolved before the November 2011 

election indicate, time is of the essence. Given this, and given 

that plaintiffs themselves characterize count two as a fallback 

position, see Oral Arg. Tr. at 13:2–4, 15:11–15 

(characterizing count two as an “alternative claim[]” that 

plaintiffs brought in case they lose on count one), we are 

reluctant to consume precious time resolving plaintiffs’ 

standing to bring count two—time the district court could 

instead devote to considering the merits of plaintiffs’ principal 

argument, asserted in count one, that Congress’s 2006 

reauthorization of section 5 exceeded its Fourteenth and 

Fifteenth Amendment enforcement powers. 

 Therefore, exercising our discretion to decline to reach 

issues neither addressed by the district court nor adequately 

briefed on appeal, we shall vacate the district court’s 

dismissal of count two and remand so that court may, in the 

first instance, consider the issues we have identified with 

respect to that count while also addressing the merits of count 

one. See Int’l Union, United Auto., Aerospace & Agric. 

Implement Workers of Am. v. Brock, 783 F.2d 237, 251 (D.C. 

Cir. 1986) (noting that federal appellate courts have discretion 

to remand “purely legal” issues unaddressed by the district 

court and inadequately briefed on appeal). In doing so, we 

emphasize that nothing in this opinion should be read as 

expressing definitive views about how the questions we have 

posed should be answered. Moreover, we recognize that 

plaintiffs’ assertion of standing with respect to count two 

might raise other issues beyond those we have identified. That 

said, we expect that by addressing the questions we have 

raised, the parties will help the district court, and ultimately 

this court, (1) identify the precise theories on which plaintiffs 

rely in support of their count-two standing, and (2) understand 

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32 

how those theories relate to existing precedent and what 

implications the theories might have for future cases. 

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the district court’s 

dismissal of count one, vacate its dismissal of count two, and 

remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

So ordered. 

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