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Page Number: 9

2 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

Opinion of the Court 

I 
A 
  Shortly  after  the  Civil  War,  Congress  passed  and  the 
States  ratified  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  providing  that 
“[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not 
be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previ-
ous condition of servitude.”  U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, §1.  In 
the century that followed, however, the Amendment proved 
little more than a parchment promise.  Jim Crow laws like 
literacy  tests,  poll  taxes,  and  “good-morals”  requirements 
abounded,  South  Carolina  v.  Katzenbach,  383  U. S.  301, 
312–313  (1966),  “render[ing]  the  right  to  vote  illusory  for 
blacks,” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. 
Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 220–221 (2009) (THOMAS, J., concur-
ring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).  Congress 
stood up to little of it; “[t]he first century of congressional 
enforcement of the [Fifteenth] Amendment . . . can only be 
regarded as a failure.”  Id., at 197 (majority opinion). 
  That changed in 1965.  Spurred by the Civil Rights move-
ment, Congress enacted and President Johnson signed into 
law  the  Voting  Rights  Act.    79  Stat.  437,  as  amended,  52 
U. S. C.  §10301  et seq.    The  Act  “create[d]  stringent  new 
remedies for voting discrimination,” attempting to forever 
“banish the blight of racial discrimination in voting.”  Kat-
zenbach, 383 U. S., at 308.  By 1981, in only sixteen years’ 
time,  many  considered the  VRA  “the  most successful  civil 
rights statute in the history of the Nation.”  S. Rep. No. 97–
417, p. 111 (1982) (Senate Report). 
  These cases concern Section 2 of that Act.  In its original 
form,  “§2  closely  tracked  the  language  of  the  [Fifteenth] 
Amendment” and, as a result, had little independent force.  
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. ___, 
___ (2021)  (slip  op.,  at 3).1   Our  leading  case on  §2  at the 

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1 As  originally  enacted,  §2  provided  that  “[n]o  voting qualification  or