Presley v. Etowah County Commission’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
59 federal appellate · 31 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 270 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Texas v. United States (1998), Tommy Olmstead Commissioner Georgia Department of Human Resourcess v. L C Jonathan Zimring (1999)
59 federal appellate · 31 district · 23 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2284 · 42 U.S.C. § 1973 (§ 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) · 42 U.S.C. § 1973B (§ 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) · 42 U.S.C. § 1973C (§ 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) · 42 U.S.C. § 2000D
Relies on Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. · Reynolds v. Sims · Allen v. State Board of Elections · South Carolina v. Katzenbach · Perkins v. Matthews
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 270 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“we defer to an administrative interpretation of a statute ... only if Congress has not expressed its intent with respect to the question”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“affect only the distribution of power among officials [and] are not subject to § 5 because such changes have no direct relation to, or impact on, voting.”). Again, the distinction between § 2 and § 5 of the Voting Rights Act is apparent. 15 . In view of the illegality of this mandate to remove the Probate Judge and to create a fifth Commissioner for the Dallas County Commission, this challenged election scheme, namely the 1988 Lichtman Plan as amended in 1992 to comport with 1990 census data, cannot constitute a remedy,”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Neither the appellants nor the United States has pointed to anything we said there or in the statutes reenacting the Voting Rights Act to suggest that Congress meant anything other than what it said when it made § 5 applicable to changes ‘with respect to voting’ rather than, say, changes ‘with respect to governance.’ If federalism is to operate as a practical system of governance and not a mere poetic ideal, the States must be allowed both predictability and efficiency in structuring their governments. Constant minor adjustments in the allocation of power among state and local officials serve this elemental purpose. Covered changes must bear a direct relation to voting itself____”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.