Court Opinion

ID: 9425265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:14.382688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.424990
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
dissenting.
For the reasons stated in his opinion, I agree with Mr. Justice White that the Attorney General did not comply with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, and that therefore Georgia's reapportionment act should have been allowed to go into effect. It is indeed a serious intrusion, incompatible with the basic structure of our system, for federal authorities to compel a State to submit its legislation for advance review.* As a minimum, assuming the constitutionality of the Act, the Attorney General should be required to comply with it explicitly and to invoke its provisions only when he is able to make an affirmative finding rather than an ambivalent one.

 As Mr. Justice Black stated, the power vested in federal officials under § 5 of the Act to veto state laws in advance of their effectiveness “distorts our constitutional structure of government.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 358 (1966) (concurring and dissenting). A similar appraisal was made by Mr. Justice Harlan, who characterized § 5, as construed by the Court, as “a revolutionary innovation in American government.” Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 585 (1969) (concurring and dissenting). I have no doubt as to the power of the Congress under the Fifteenth Amendment to enact appropriate legislation to assure that the rights of citizens to vote shall not be denied, abridged, or infringed in any way “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Indeed, in my view there is more than a power to enact such legislation, there is a duty. My disagreement is with the unprecedented requirement of advance review of state or local legislative acts by federal authorities, rendered the more noxious by its selective application to only a few States.