Beer v. United States
The Court ruled that a New Orleans redistricting plan did not violate the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement, because the plan improved Black voters' position compared to the old map rather than making it worse.
The decision established that federal reviewers evaluating covered jurisdictions' voting changes should ask only whether a new plan leaves minority voters worse off than before, not whether it achieves full proportional representation — a standard that would guide voting-rights preclearance decisions for decades.
“the purpose of § 5 has always been to insure that no voting-procedure changes would be made that would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise”
The Court's core statement of the retrogression standard for evaluating voting changes.
How it got here: A three-judge federal district court ruled the plan would abridge Black citizens' voting rights and refused to approve it; New Orleans appealed that judgment directly to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
New Orleans, roughly 45% Black in population but only 35% Black among registered voters, elected its city council from five geographic districts plus two at-large seats. After the 1970 census the city drew new district lines twice; the U.S. Attorney General rejected both plans as diluting Black voting strength. The city then asked a federal court to declare its second plan free of discriminatory purpose or effect.
The question before the Court
When New Orleans redrew its city council districts and Black voters' odds of electing councilmen went up slightly but still fell short of proportional representation, did that improvement satisfy the Voting Rights Act?
Why it matters
The ruling meant New Orleans could proceed with its new council districts, ending a standoff that had frozen city elections since 1970. More broadly, it told states and cities covered by the Voting Rights Act that modest gains for minority voters could satisfy federal review, even without matching their share of the population — shaping how officials nationwide drew election maps.
What changes now
The case goes back to the district court, which must now proceed under the Court's new standard. The district court had never decided whether the city drew the plan with a discriminatory purpose, a question the dissent noted remains open on remand. New Orleans could put the plan into effect once its preclearance status was resolved, ending the freeze on city council elections that had lasted since 1970.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether New Orleans drew the plan with an intent to discriminate against Black voters — only that the plan's effect was not a step backward from the prior map. It also left open, without deciding, whether a district identical to one in an earlier map can ever be reviewed under the preclearance law.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (1). Justice Stewart (author).
Dissent (2). Justice White (author).
Dissent — Justice White
Justice White argued the Voting Rights Act requires more than avoiding backsliding — it requires covered jurisdictions to give minority voters, where practicable, a realistic chance at legislative representation roughly proportional to their population. Given New Orleans's history of racial bloc voting, he would have required the city to offer Black voters a real chance to elect about three of seven councilmen, not just one, and would have affirmed the district court's rejection of the plan. Read the full dissent →
Dissent — Justice Marshall
“the Court approves a blatantly discriminatory districting plan for the city of New Orleans”Marshall's central objection to the majority's approval of the redistricting plan.
Justice Marshall argued the majority invented an unsupported 'retrogression' test that has no basis in the statute's text or purposes, and that the real question is simply whether the new plan itself meets the constitutional standard against vote dilution. Applying that standard, he found New Orleans's north-south districts, drawn mainly to protect incumbents, sliced up a concentrated Black community and failed to show the compelling justification needed given the city's documented history of excluding Black voters from the political process. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first held that the two long-standing at-large council seats, unchanged since 1954, were not new voting changes and so could not by themselves be rejected under the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement, which reaches only changes made after November 1, 1964.
- The Court then read the preclearance provision's purpose from its legislative history: Congress designed it to stop covered places from adopting new discriminatory rules faster than courts could strike down the old ones, effectively freezing election rules until a new one is shown not to make things worse for minority voters.
- From that purpose, the Court derived a 'retrogression' test: a new redistricting plan violates the preclearance requirement only if it leaves minority voters worse off in their real chance to elect candidates of choice than they were under the old plan, not merely because it stops short of proportional representation.
- The Court distinguished this case from an earlier ruling involving a city annexation that reduced Black population share, explaining that here there was no such backward step to measure the new plan against.
- Applying the retrogression test to the facts, the Court found that under the new map Black voters would go from being unable to elect any councilman to a realistic chance of electing one, and possibly two, so the plan was an improvement rather than a decline.
- Because the plan made things better rather than worse for Black voters' voting power, the Court held it could not be blocked under the preclearance standard unless it was independently unconstitutional, a separate question the Court found no basis to answer against the city on this record.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms South Carolina v. Katzenbach (383 U. S. 301)
Relies on this case as still-good law upholding the constitutionality of the preclearance procedure.
Reaffirms Georgia v. United States (411 U. S. 526)
Confirms that the preclearance requirement applies to legislative reapportionment plans, while leaving one issue open.
Distinguishes City of Richmond v. United States (422 U. S. 358)
Says that case involved a change making Black voting power worse, unlike this case's improvement.