The U.S. Supreme Court case City of Mobile, Alabama v. Bolden in 1979 addressed allegations of racial discrimination in the electoral process for city commissioners in Mobile, Alabama. The plaintiffs argued that the at-large voting system diluted African American votes and violated both the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). However, a majority on the court held that discriminatory impact alone was insufficient to prove a violation under either provision; instead, it must be shown that there was intentional discrimination or racially motivated purpose behind such systems or practices. This ruling made it significantly more difficult to challenge voting practices as discriminatory under federal law until Congress amended Section 2 of VRA in 1982 to explicitly allow claims based on discriminatory effect regardless of intent.

In the dissenting opinion for City of Mobile, Alabama v. Bolden et al., Justice Marshall argued that the majority's decision was a departure from previous interpretations of the Voting Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment. He contended that it is not necessary to prove discriminatory intent in order to establish a violation of voting rights; instead, demonstrating discriminatory impact should be sufficient. The justice pointed out that under this new standard set by the majority, many past successful challenges against electoral systems would fail because they did not provide evidence of intentional discrimination. Furthermore, he criticized the court's refusal to consider statistical evidence as proof of racial discrimination in voting practices. In his view, this approach ignored systemic racism and its effects on minority voters' ability to participate equally in elections.