Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 52.0

8 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Weaken  the  Voting  Rights  Act,  and  predictable  conse-
quences  follow:  yet  a  further  generation  of  voter  suppres-
sion laws. 
  Much of the Voting Rights Act’s success lay in its capacity 
to  meet  ever-new  forms  of  discrimination.    Experience 
showed that “[w]henever one form of voting discrimination 
was  identified  and  prohibited,  others  sprang  up  in  its 
place.”  Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 560 (Ginsburg, J., dis-
senting).  Combating those efforts was like “battling the Hy-
dra”—or  to  use  a  less  cultured  reference,  like  playing  a 
game of whack-a-mole.  Ibid.  So Congress, in Section 5 of 
the Act, gave the Department of Justice authority to review 
all new rules devised by jurisdictions with a history of voter 
suppression—and to block any that would have discrimina-
tory effects.  See 52 U. S. C. §§10304(a)–(b).  In that way, 
the Act would prevent the use of new, more nuanced meth-
ods  to  restrict  the  voting  opportunities  of  non-white  citi-
zens. 
  And  for  decades,  Section  5  operated  as  intended.    Be-
tween 1965 and 2006, the Department stopped almost 1200 
voting laws in covered areas from taking effect.  See Shelby 
County, 570 U. S., at 571 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).  Some 
of  those  laws  used  districting  to  dilute  minority  voting 
strength—making sure that the votes of minority citizens 
would carry less weight than the votes of whites in electing 
candidates.  Other laws, even if facially neutral, dispropor-
tionately curbed the ability of non-white citizens to cast a 
ballot at all.  So, for example, a jurisdiction might require 
forms of identification that those voters were less likely to 
have; or it might limit voting places and times convenient 
for  those  voters;  or  it  might  purge  its  voter  rolls  through 
mechanisms especially likely to ensnare them.  See id., at 
574–575.  In reviewing mountains of such evidence in 2006, 
Congress  saw  a  continuing  need  for  Section  5.    Although 
“discrimination today is more subtle than the visible meth-
ods  used  in  1965,”  Congress  found,  it  still  produces  “the