Cite as: 594 U. S. ____ (2021)
5
Opinion of the Court
found that this evidence sufficed to prove the plaintiffs’
claim. See id., at 766–769. The decision in White predated
Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), where the Court
held that an equal-protection challenge to a facially neutral
rule requires proof of discriminatory purpose or intent, id.,
at 238–245, and the White opinion said nothing one way or
the other about purpose or intent.
A few years later, the question whether a VRA §2 claim
required discriminatory purpose or intent came before this
Court in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55 (1980). The plurality opinion for four Justices concluded first that §2 of the
VRA added nothing to the protections afforded by the Fifteenth Amendment. Id., at 60–61. The plurality then observed that prior decisions “ha[d] made clear that action by
a State that is racially neutral on its face violates the Fifteenth Amendment only if motivated by a discriminatory
purpose.” Id., at 62. The obvious result of those premises
was that facially neutral voting practices violate §2 only if
motivated by a discriminatory purpose. The plurality read
White as consistent with this requirement. Bolden, 446
U. S., at 68–70.
Shortly after Bolden was handed down, Congress
amended §2 of the VRA. The oft-cited Report of the Senate
Judiciary Committee accompanying the 1982 Amendment
stated that the amendment’s purpose was to repudiate Bolden and establish a new vote-dilution test based on what
the Court had said in White. See S. Rep. No. 97–417, pp. 2,
15–16, 27. The bill that was initially passed by the House
of Representatives included what is now §2(a). In place of
the phrase “to deny or abridge the right . . . to vote on account of race or color,” the amendment substituted “in a
manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the
right . . . to vote on account of race or color.” H. R. Rep. No.
97–227, p. 48 (1981) (emphasis added); H. R. 3112, 97th
Cong., 1st Sess., §2, p. 8 (introduced Oct. 7, 1981).