"[6] These remedies were bolstered by §5, which suspended any change in state election procedure until the federal government certified that it neither "has the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color."

However, recognizing that this coverage formula "might bring within its sweep governmental units not guilty of any unlawful discriminatory voting practices, [Congress] afforded such jurisdictions immediately available protection in the form of ... [a] 'bailout' suit.

The Fifteenth Amendment promises that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

But litigation is slow and expensive, and the States were creative in "contriving new rules" to continue violating the Fifteenth Amendment "in the face of adverse federal court decrees."

Section 2 of the Act operates nationwide; as it exists today, that provision forbids any "standard, practice, or procedure" that "results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."

These two remedies were bolstered by §5, which suspended all changes in state election procedure until they were submitted to and approved by a three-judge Federal District Court in Washington, D. C., or the Attorney General.

To confine these remedies to areas of flagrant disenfranchisement, the Act applied them only to States that had used a forbidden test or device in November 1964, and had less than 50% voter registration or turnout in the 1964 Presidential election.

The coverage formula remained the same, based on the use of voting-eligibility tests and the rate of registration and turnout among all voters, but the pertinent dates for assessing these criteria moved from 1964 to include 1968 and eventually 1972.

Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One was created in 1987 to deliver city services to residents of a portion of Travis County, Texas.

But a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute's disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.

The Continuing Need for Section 5 Pre-Clearance: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Cong., 2d Sess., 10 (2006) (statement of Richard H. Pildes); see also Persily, The Promise and Pitfalls of the New Voting Rights Act, 117 Yale L. J.

The parties do not agree on the standard to apply in deciding whether, in light of the foregoing concerns, Congress exceeded its Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power in extending the preclearance requirements.

of Comm'rs, 435 U. S. 110, we rejected the argument by a Texas city that it was neither a State nor a political subdivision as defined in the Act, and therefore did not need to seek preclearance of a voting change.

Entitlement to bailout, however, requires a covered "political subdivision" to submit substantial evidence indicating that it is not engaging in "discrimination in voting on account of race," see 42 U. S. C. §1973b(a)(3).

See Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring) ("The Court will not pass upon a constitutional question although properly presented by the record, if there is also some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of"); see also, e.g., Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U. S. 605, 629 (1974).

It must show that during the previous 10 years: (A) no "test or device has been used within such State or political subdivision for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color"; (B) "no final judgment of any court of the United States ... has determined that denials or abridgments of the right to vote on account of race or color have occurred anywhere in the territory of" the covered jurisdiction; (C) "no Federal examiners or observers ... have been assigned to" the covered jurisdiction; (D) the covered jurisdiction has fully complied with §5; and (E) "the Attorney General has not interposed any objection (that has not been overturned by a final judgment of a court) and no declaratory judgment has been denied under [§5]."

In the specific area of voting rights, this Court has consistently recognized that the Constitution gives the States primary authority over the structuring of electoral systems.

For example, §§2 and 4(a) seek to implement the Fifteenth Amendment's substantive command by creating a private cause of action to enforce §1 of the Fifteenth Amendment, see §1973(a), and by banning discriminatory tests and devices in covered jurisdictions, see §1973b(a); see also City of Lockhart v. United States, 460 U. S. 125, 139 (1983) (Marshall, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (explaining that §2 reflects Congress' determination "that voting discrimination was a nationwide problem" that called for a "general prohibition of discriminatory practices").

Section 5 "was a response to a common practice in some jurisdictions of staying one step ahead of the federal courts by passing new discriminatory voting laws as soon as the old ones had been struck down.

The rebellion against the enfranchisement of blacks in the wake of ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment illustrated the need for increased federal intervention to protect the right to vote.

The Court had declared many of these "tests and devices" unconstitutional, see Katzenbach, supra, at 311-312, but case-by-case eradication was woefully inadequate to ensure that the franchise extended to all citizens regardless of race, see id., at 328.

Thus, by 1965, Congress had every reason to conclude that States with a history of disenfranchising voters based on race would continue to do all they could to evade the constitutional ban on voting discrimination.

As the Katzenbach Court explained, §5, which applied to those States and political subdivisions that had employed discriminatory tests and devices in the previous Presidential election, see 42 U. S. C. §1973b(b), directly targeted the "insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution."

383 U. S., at 309; see also id., at 329 ("Congress began work with reliable evidence of actual voting discrimination in a great majority of the States and political subdivisions affected by the new remedies of the Act").

The Court believed it was thus "permissible to impose the new remedies" on the jurisdictions covered under §4(b) "at least in the absence of proof that they ha[d] been free of substantial voting discrimination in recent years."

In upholding §5 in Katzenbach, the Court nonetheless noted that the provision was an "uncommon exercise of congressional power" that would not have been "appropriate" absent the "exceptional conditions" and "unique circumstances" present in the targeted jurisdictions at that particular time.

The explicit command of the Fifteenth Amendment is a prohibition on state practices that in fact deny individuals the right to vote "on account of" race, color, or previous servitude.

In contrast, §5 is the quintessential prophylaxis; it "goes beyond the prohibition of the Fifteenth Amendment by suspending all changes to state election law--however innocuous--until they have been precleared by federal authorities in Washington, D. C." Ante, at 7.

But there is no evidence that public officials stand ready, if given the chance, to again engage in concerted acts of violence, terror, and subterfuge in order to keep minorities from voting.

The other evidence relied on by Congress, such as §5 enforcement actions, §§2 and 4 lawsuits, and federal examiner and observer coverage, also bears no resemblance to the record initially supporting §5, and is plainly insufficient to sustain such an extraordinary remedy.