Court Opinion

ID: 9428567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:08.718535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.268088
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice Powell joins,
concurring.
The per curiam correctly concludes that the June 1, 1979, letter from Sumter County was a request for reconsideration, not a preclearance submission. Therefore, I concur in the per curiam’s reasoning and conclusion. I concur reluctantly, however, for the record in this case illustrates what I view as the unreasonably burdensome and unrealistic control which the Federal Government routinely exercises over state and local governments under the Voting Rights Act.
*402The record recounts a 5-year effort by Sumter County to obtain the approval of several United States Assistant Attorneys General for an election method adopted by the South Carolina General Assembly. This effort included occasional correspondence with high-level attorneys in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and, apparently, more frequent contact with low-level attorneys who requested information about plans, statistics, histories, names, places, and related facts. Although such communications are not unusual in dealings with today’s federal bureaucracy, the record portrays a particularly frustrating effort to please a distant authority with veto power over the decisions of local officials. For example, an October 31, 1977, letter from appellees to an Assistant Attorney General explains the county’s legal inability under state law to comply with various “suggestions” from the Department of Justice. The letter concludes:
“This leaves us in a dilemma. The [County] Council doesn’t wish to be in the position of seeming to pay no attention to your suggestion that the form of election should properly be changed; or to seem to be disregarding your suggestions. On the other hand, the County’s Council is advised that it has inadequate legal power to act under South Carolina law in the manner you seem to be suggesting. . . . Perhaps you can suggest something to us which would help us to resolve our difficulties which have us disturbed, perplexed, and confounded.” 1 Record, Defendants’ Exhibit 20, pp. 2-3, attached to County Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment, filed Jan. 25, 1980.
Today’s decision, of course, will only reopen the dispute and again place the county at the mercy of attorneys in the Justice Department. There seems to be something inherently unsatisfactory about a system which places such discretion*403ary authority in the hands of a few unelected federal officials who are wholly detached from the realities of the locality and the preferences of the local electorate. Nonetheless, it is the system which Congress has established, and I therefore concur in the judgment.