The U.S. Supreme Court last week made several landmark decisions. One of those decisions concerns the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which is surrounded by much history and debate. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of VRA on June 25, specifically Section 4 requiring certain cities, counties, and states to get preapproval from the Justice Department before changing voting laws.

The purpose of the VRA was to stop states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen ... to vote on account of race or color.”

Under Section 4 of the Act, jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices were required to get preclearance from the Department of Justice before any law regarding voting could be imposed.

After the provision was reauthorized by Congress for another 25 years in 2006, several counties in Alabama and North Carolina filed suit. They asserted that the monitoring was burdensome and unwarranted. Shelby County was one of the counties that filed suit. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Alabama county filed suit asserting the Section 4 of the Act was unfair.

With a 5-4 vote, the Court freed nine states and many municipalities and counties to make changes in voting laws without preapproval from the federal government.

The Supreme Court did not strike down the Voting Rights Act, only part of Section 4(b) and its formula for deciding what jurisdictions must get preclearance. The Court did not strike down preclearance, only the way it is currently applied.

Section 5 of the VRA gives federal authorities oversight of jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination.
Before this decision, the law applied to nine states and many counties and municipalities. The nine states were: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority, and said in part, “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.”

The main problem with Section 4, according to the majority, was that the coverage formula found in Section 4 was based on data from 1975. The chief justice also wrote that the current system is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.” It is stressed that contemporary data must be used in order for the federal government to require preclearance from jurisdictions.

While the Court did not strike down Section 5, it is essentially without significance because Section 4 specified what jurisdictions were subject to Section 5. Congress, however, can pass a new bill with contemporary data to determine which states would be covered by Section 5. If Section 5 of the Act is to live on, Congress will have to act and pass a new bill. With the current upheaval and bickering in Congress, that seems unlikely.