Court Opinion

ID: 9428822
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:53.88624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.419476
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
The provisions of §§ 5,12(f), and 14(b) of the Voting Rights Act, referred to in the opinion of the Court, ante, at 265-268, convince me that Congress did not intend the state courts to play a role in the enforcement of that Act. In Gulf Offshore Co. v. Mobil Oil Corp., 453 U. S. 473 (1981), upon which the Court heavily relies for its contrary conclusion, we said:
“The factors generally recommending exclusive federal-court jurisdiction over an area of federal law include the desirability of uniform interpretation, the expertise of federal judges in federal law, and the assumed greater hospitality of federal courts to peculiarly federal claims.” Id., at 483-484 (footnotes omitted).
It seems to me that each of these factors counsels in favor of exclusive federal-court jurisdiction, and I do not understand the Court to contend otherwise.
From a practical point of view, I think the Court’s decision is bound to breed conflicts between the state courts and the federal district courts sitting within the States, each of which may now determine whether or not a particular voting change must be precleared with the Attorney General before being enforced in a covered jurisdiction. Indeed, the precursor of such conflict may well be found in the Court’s concluding observations that the District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, in which the United States has pending a suit pertaining to the change involved in this case, should proceed to make determinations under the Voting *272Rights Act before the state court whose judgment we are reviewing renders further remedy in this case. Exactly what is to be left to the States under this construction is more than a little problematical.
I do not think that the goals of the Voting Rights Act will be materially advanced by the Court’s somewhat tortured effort to make the state courts a third line of enforcement for the Act, after the District Court for the District of Columbia and other federal district courts. The principal effect of today’s decision will be to enable one or the other of parties such as those involved in this case, neither of whom were intended to be primary beneficiaries of the Voting Rights Act, to employ the Act as another weapon in their arsenal of litigation strategies.