Opinion ID: 109418
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Fifteenth Amendment provides:

Text: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. U. S. Const., Amdt. 15, § 1. Although the Amendment is self-enforcing, litigation to secure the rights it guarantees proved time consuming and ineffective, while the will of those who resisted its command was strong and unwavering. Finally Congress decided to intervene. In 1965 it enacted the Voting Rights Act, designed to rid the country of racial discrimination in voting. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 315. See also id., at 308-315. The Act proclaims that its purpose is to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution . . . , 79 Stat. 437; the heart of its enforcement mechanism is § 5. In language that tracks that of the Fifteenth Amendment, § 5 declares that no State covered by the Act shall enforce any plan with respect to voting different from that in effect on November 1, 1964, unless the Attorney General or a three-judge District Court in the District of Columbia declares that such plan does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color . . . . 42 U. S. C. § 1973c (1970 ed., Supp. V). [1] While the substantive reach of § 5 is somewhat broader than that of the Fifteenth Amendment in at least one regard the burden of proof is shifted from discriminatee to discriminator [2] § 5 is undoubtedly tied to the standards of the Constitution. [3] Thus, it is questionable whether the purpose and effect language states anything more than the constitutional standard, [4] and it is clear that the denying or abridging phrase does no more than directly adopt the language of the Fifteenth Amendment. In justifying its convoluted construction of § 5, however, the Court never deals with the fact that, by its plain language, § 5 does no more than adopt, or arguably expand, [5] the constitutional standard. Since it has never been held, or even suggested, that the constitutional standard requires an inquiry into whether a redistricting plan is ameliorative or retrogressive, a fortiori there is no basis for so reading § 5. While the Court attempts to provide a basis by relying on the asserted purpose of § 5to preserve present Negro voting strength [6] it is wholly unsuccessful. What superficial credibility the argument musters is achieved by ignoring not only the statutory language, but also at least three other purposes behind § 5. [7] Thus, the legislative history of the Voting Rights Act makes clear, and the Court assiduously ignores, that § 5 was designed to preclude new districting plans that perpetuate discrimination, [8] to prevent covered jurisdictions from circumventing the guarantees of the 15th amendment by switching to new, and discriminatory, districting plans the moment litigants appear on the verge of having an existing one declared unconstitutional, [9] and promptly to end discrimination in voting by pressuring covered jurisdictions to remove all vestiges of discrimination from their enactments before submitting them for preclearance. [10] None of these purposes is furthered by an inquiry into whether a proposed districting plan is ameliorative or retrogressive. Indeed, the statement of these purposes is alone sufficient to demonstrate the error of the Court's construction. All the purposes of the statute are met, however, by the inquiry § 5's language plainly contemplates: whether, in absolute terms, the covered jurisdiction can show that its proposed plan meets the constitutional standard. Because it is consistent with both the statutory language and the legislative purposes, this is the proper construction of the provision. Thus, it is the effect of the plan itself, rather than the effect of the change in plans, that should be at issue in a § 5 proceeding. [11] Ultimately, the Court admits as much by adding an inquiry into whether the proposed plan, even if ameliorative, is constitutional. After this admission, I cannot understand why the Court bothers at all with its preliminary inquiry into the nature of the change of plans, since the inquiry not only adds nothing, but will, I fear, prove to be a time-consuming distraction from the important business of assessing the constitutionality of the proposed plan. [12] Except for this unnecessary step, however, the Court's final reading of the statute, on its face, no more than duplicates my own. [13] Nonetheless, I still do not accept the Court's approach. After properly returning the constitutional inquiry to the § 5 proceeding, the Court inexplicably tosses off the question in a footnote, and never undertakes the analysis that both our constitutional cases and our § 5 cases have demanded. [14] This ultimate denigration of the constitutional standard is a result far short of the promise Congress held out in enacting, and re-enacting, the Voting Rights Act, and it is one in which I cannot join.