Cite as: 570 U. S. ____ (2013) 3 GINSBURG, J., dissenting people of a State and the State itself, must be given by them or by the legislative and political department of the government of the United States.” Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475, 488 (1903). Congress learned from experience that laws targeting particular electoral practices or enabling case-by-case litigation were inadequate to the task. In the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, Congress authorized and then expanded the power of “the Attorney General to seek injunctions against public and private interference with the right to vote on racial grounds.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 313. But circumstances reduced the ameliorative potential of these legislative Acts: “Voting suits are unusually onerous to prepare, some­ times requiring as many as 6,000 man-hours spent combing through registration records in preparation for trial. Litigation has been exceedingly slow, in part because of the ample opportunities for delay afforded voting officials and others involved in the proceed­ ings. Even when favorable decisions have finally been obtained, some of the States affected have merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by the federal decrees or have enacted difficult new tests de­ signed to prolong the existing disparity between white and Negro registration. Alternatively, certain local of­ ficials have defied and evaded court orders or have simply closed their registration offices to freeze the voting rolls.” Id., at 314 (footnote omitted). Patently, a new approach was needed. Answering that need, the Voting Rights Act became one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s his­ tory. Requiring federal preclearance of changes in voting laws in the covered jurisdictions—those States and locali­ ties where opposition to the Constitution’s commands were