Janet Reno, Attorney General v. Bossier Parish School Board (528 U.S. 320)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 24, 2000 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 528 U.S. 320 · 120 S. Ct. 866
- Decided
- January 24, 2000
- Term
- October Term 1999
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. These eases present the question whether § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, prohibits preclearance of a redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatory but nonretrogressive purpose. I This is the second time the present cases are before us, and we thus recite the facts and procedural history only in brief. Like every other political subdivision of the State of Louisiana, Bossier Parish, because of its history of discriminatory voting practices, is a jurisdiction covered by §5 of the Voting Rights Act. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 1973c, 1973b(a), (b); 30 Fed. Reg. 9897 (1965). It is therefore prohibited from enacting any change in a “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting,” without first obtaining either administrative pre-clearance from the Attorney General or judicial preclearance from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. Bossier Parish is governed by a 12-member Police Jury elected from single-member districts for 4-year terms. In the early 1990’s, the Police Jury set out to redraw its electoral districts in order to account for demographic changes reflected in the decennial census. In 1991, it adopted a redistricting plan which, like the plan then in effect, contained…
Excerpt of a 39,219-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.