Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

found  that  this  evidence  sufficed  to  prove  the  plaintiffs’ 
claim.  See id., at 766–769.  The decision in White predated 
Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), where the Court 
held that an equal-protection challenge to a facially neutral 
rule requires proof of discriminatory purpose or intent, id., 
at 238–245, and the White opinion said nothing one way or 
the other about purpose or intent. 
  A few years later, the question whether a VRA §2 claim 
required discriminatory purpose or intent came before this 
Court in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55 (1980).  The plural-
ity  opinion for four  Justices  concluded  first that  §2  of  the 
VRA added nothing to the protections afforded by the Fif-
teenth Amendment.  Id., at 60–61.  The plurality then ob-
served that prior decisions “ha[d] made clear that action by 
a State that is racially neutral on its face violates the Fif-
teenth  Amendment  only  if  motivated  by  a  discriminatory 
purpose.”  Id., at 62.  The obvious result of those premises 
was that facially neutral voting practices violate §2 only if 
motivated by a discriminatory purpose.  The plurality read 
White  as  consistent  with  this  requirement.    Bolden,  446 
U. S., at 68–70. 
  Shortly  after  Bolden  was  handed  down,  Congress 
amended §2 of the VRA.  The oft-cited Report of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee accompanying the 1982 Amendment 
stated that the amendment’s purpose was to repudiate Bol-
den  and  establish  a  new  vote-dilution  test  based  on  what 
the Court had said in White.  See S. Rep. No. 97–417, pp. 2, 
15–16, 27.  The bill that was initially passed by the House 
of Representatives included what is now §2(a).  In place of 
the phrase “to deny or abridge the right . . . to vote on ac-
count  of  race  or  color,”  the  amendment  substituted  “in  a 
manner  which  results  in  a  denial  or  abridgement  of  the 
right . . . to vote on account of race or color.”  H. R. Rep. No. 
97–227,  p. 48  (1981)  (emphasis  added);  H.  R.  3112,  97th 
Cong., 1st Sess., §2, p. 8 (introduced Oct. 7, 1981).