Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 46.0

2 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

litical equality remained a distant dream for African Amer-
ican  citizens.    Because  States  and  localities  continually 
“contriv[ed] new rules,” mostly neutral on their face but dis-
criminatory in operation, to keep minority voters from the 
polls.    South  Carolina  v.  Katzenbach,  383  U. S.  301,  335 
(1966).    Because  “Congress  had  reason  to  suppose”  that 
States  would  “try  similar  maneuvers  in  the  future”—
“pour[ing] old poison into new bottles” to suppress minority 
votes.  Ibid.; Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 528 U. S. 
320, 366 (2000) (Souter, J., concurring in part and dissent-
ing in part).  Because Congress has been proved right. 
  The  Voting  Rights  Act  is  ambitious,  in  both  goal  and 
scope.    When  President  Lyndon  Johnson  sent  the  bill  to 
Congress,  ten  days  after  John  Lewis  led  marchers  across 
the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he explained that it was “care-
fully  drafted  to  meet  its  objective—the  end  of  discrimina-
tion in voting in America.”  H. R. Doc. No. 120, 89th Cong., 
1st  Sess.,  1–2  (1965).    He  was  right  about  how  the  Act’s 
drafting reflected its aim.  “The end of discrimination in vot-
ing” is a far-reaching goal.  And the Voting Rights Act’s text 
is just as far-reaching.  A later amendment, adding the pro-
vision at issue here, became necessary when this Court con-
strued the statute too narrowly.  And in the last decade, this 
Court  assailed  the  Act  again,  undoing  its  vital  Section  5.  
See Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529 (2013).  But Sec-
tion 2 of the Act remains, as written, as expansive as ever—
demanding that every citizen of this country possess a right 
at once grand and obvious: the right to an equal opportunity 
to vote. 
  Today, the Court undermines Section 2 and the right it 
provides.    The  majority  fears  that  the  statute  Congress 
wrote is too “radical”—that it will invalidate too many state 
voting laws.  See ante, at 21, 25.  So the majority writes its 
own set of rules, limiting Section 2 from multiple directions.  
See ante, at 16–19.  Wherever it can, the majority gives a 
cramped reading to broad language.  And then it uses that