Senate Judiciary Committee Report on the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982

The legislative history of the 1982 amendments to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Senate Judiciary Committee Report records Congress’s explicit rejection of the intent test established by City of Mobile v. Bolden (1980) and its adoption of a results test as the statutory standard for proving Section 2 violations. Key passages: at 19, on the original 1965 understanding of Section 2 as reaching discrimination regardless of intent; at 22, that before Bolden plaintiffs could prevail “by showing either discriminatory results or intent”; at 26, characterizing Bolden as “a marked departure from earlier Supreme Court and lower court vote dilution cases”; at 27, recording Congress’s intent that “either the more restrictive intent test or the results test would be sufficient to show a violation”; and at 36, rejecting the intent inquiry as “unnecessarily divisive because it involves charges of racism on the part of individual officials or entire communities” and as a test that “asks the wrong question.”

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