Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 69

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

25 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

act as continued barriers to registration and voting”).8  Sec-
tion 2 was meant to disrupt the status quo, not to preserve 
it—to eradicate then-current discriminatory practices, not 
to set them in amber.  See Bossier, 528 U. S., at 334 (under 
Section 2, “[i]f the status quo” abridges the right to vote “rel-
ative to what the right to vote ought to be, the status quo 
itself must be changed”).9  And as to election rules common 
now,  the  majority  oversimplifies.    Even  if  those  rules  are 
unlikely to violate Section 2 everywhere, they may easily do 
so somewhere.  That is because the demographics and po-
litical geography of States vary widely and Section 2’s ap-
plication depends on place-specific facts.  As we have recog-
nized,  the  statute  calls  for  “an  intensely  local  appraisal,” 
not  a  count-up-the-States  exercise.    Gingles,  478  U. S.,  at 
79; see supra, at 17.  This case, as I’ll later discuss, offers a 
perfect illustration of how the difference between those two 
approaches can matter.  See infra, at 29–40. 

—————— 

8 The House Report listed some of those offensive, even though facially 
neutral and then-prevalent, practices: “inconvenient location and hours 
of registration, dual registration for county and city elections,” “frequent 
and  unnecessary  purgings  and  burdensome  registration  requirements, 
and failure to provide . . . assistance to illiterates.”  H. R. Rep., at 14.  So 
too the Senate Report complained of “inconvenient voting and registra-
tion  hours”  and  “reregistration  requirements  and  purging  of  voters.”  
S. Rep., at 10, n. 22; see supra, at 16. 

9 Even setting aside Section 2’s status-quo-disrupting lean, this Court 
has  long  rejected—including  just  last  Term—the  majority’s  claim  that 
the  state  of  the  world  at  the  time  of  a  statute’s  enactment  provides  a 
useful “benchmark[ ]” when applying a broadly written law.  Ante, at 17.  
Such  a  law  will  typically  come  to  encompass  applications—even  “im-
portant” ones—that were not “foreseen at the time of enactment.”  Bos-
tock v. Clayton County, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 26).  To pre-
vent  that  from  happening—as  the  majority  does  today,  on  the  ground 
that Congress simply must have “intended” it—is “to displace the plain 
meaning of the law in favor of something lying behind it.”  Ibid.; see id., 
at ___ (slip op., at 30) (When a law is “written in starkly broad terms,” it 
is “virtually guaranteed that unexpected applications [will] emerge over 
time”).