Supreme Court stops use of key part of Voting Rights Act
Video: Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday he was “very disappointed” with the supreme court’s invalidation of part of the Voting Rights Act.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the other conservative members of the court in the majority.
Read the decision
Supreme Court voting rights ruling
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The court did not strike down a provision allowing special federal oversight but said Congress must come up with a new formula based on current data to identify which states should be covered. Proponents of the law, which protects minority voting rights, have said it will be extremely difficult for a Congress bitterly divided along partisan lines to come up with such an agreement.
The act currently covers the southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as Alaska and Arizona, and parts of seven other states. It requires them to receive “pre-clearance” from either the attorney general or federal judges before making any changes to election or voting laws.
Roberts said that the court had warned Congress four years ago, in a separate case, that basing the coverage formula on “40-year-old facts” led to serious constitutional questions.
“Congress could have updated the coverage formula at that time, but did not do so,” Roberts wrote. “Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare [the formula] unconstitutional.”
He added: “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
He was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized the liberals’ disagreement with the decision by reading her dissent from the bench.
She said the the Constitution’s Civil War amendments specifically instruct Congress to pass laws enforcing equal rights and protecting the voting interests of minorities. She noted the 2006 extension of the VRA was approved unanimously in the Senate and signed by President George W. Bush.
“Congress’s decision to renew the act and keep the coverage formula was an altogether rational means to serve the end of achieving what was once the subject of a dream: the equal citizenship stature of all in our polity, a voice to every voter in our democracy undiluted by race,” she said.
She was joined in dissent by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
At stake was Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which even challengers credit with delivering the promise of political inclusion to minority voters and eventually leading to the election of the nation’s first African American president.
The court reviewed the provision for the sixth time since passage in 1965. It survived each challenge.
Reaction was predictable. Conservatives said it was a recognition of state sovereignty and of the fact that the country has changed since the act was first passed. As Roberts noted from the bench and in his opinion, black turnout in recent elections was higher than that of whites.
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