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4 

SHELBY COUNTY v. HOLDER 

GINSBURG, J., dissenting 

most virulent—the VRA provided a fit solution for minor­
ity  voters  as  well  as  for  States.    Under  the  preclearance
regime established by §5 of the VRA, covered jurisdictions 
must  submit  proposed  changes  in  voting  laws  or  proce­
dures  to  the  Department  of  Justice  (DOJ),  which  has  60
days  to  respond  to  the  changes.  79  Stat.  439,  codified  at 
42  U. S. C.  §1973c(a).    A  change  will  be  approved  unless
DOJ finds it has “the purpose [or] . . . the effect of denying
or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.” 
Ibid.  In the alternative, the covered jurisdiction may seek 
approval by a three-judge District Court in the District of
Columbia. 

After  a  century’s  failure  to  fulfill  the  promise  of  the 
Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments,  passage  of  the
VRA finally led to signal improvement on this front.  “The 
Justice Department estimated that in the five years after
[the VRA’s] passage, almost as many blacks registered [to 
vote]  in  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Georgia,  Louisiana,  North 
Carolina,  and  South  Carolina  as  in  the  entire  century 
before  1965.”    Davidson,  The  Voting  Rights  Act:  A  Brief 
History,  in  Controversies  in  Minority  Voting  7,  21  (B.
Grofman & C. Davidson eds. 1992).  And in assessing the
overall  effects  of  the  VRA  in  2006,  Congress  found  that
“[s]ignificant  progress  has  been  made  in  eliminating  first 
generation  barriers  experienced  by  minority  voters,  in­
cluding  increased  numbers  of  registered  minority  voters,
minority  voter  turnout,  and  minority  representation  in 
Congress, State legislatures, and local elected offices.  This 
progress  is  the  direct  result  of  the  Voting  Rights  Act  of
1965.”  Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott 
King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments 
Act  of  2006  (hereinafter  2006  Reauthorization),  §2(b)(1), 
120  Stat.  577.    On  that  matter  of  cause  and  effects  there 
can be no genuine doubt. 

Although  the  VRA  wrought  dramatic  changes  in  the 
realization  of  minority  voting  rights,  the  Act,  to  date,