High court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act in 5-4 ruling

Story by the Hill
Written by Sam Baker

The Supreme Court struck down a key piece of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, overturning a decades-old policy designed to protect minorities from discrimination.

In a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court struck down a formula used to determine whether state and local governments must get permission from the federal government before changing their voting practices.

Roberts said the formula, which Congress first passed in 1965, has outlived its usefulness.

“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,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

President Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” in the ruling and called on Congress to quickly restore the provisions the court struck down.

“Today’s decision … upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent,” Obama said in a statement.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused the court of “hubris” for overturning a formula that Congress decided was the best way to prevent discrimination at the polls.

“In my judgment, the court errs egregiously by overriding Congress' decision,” Ginsburg said.

Congress first passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and has renewed it several times since then — most recently in 2006. But it has not updated the criteria for determining which state and local governments must get federal “preclearance” before changing their voting procedures.

Congress put an unfair burden on the states by renewing a formula written so long ago, the Supreme Court said.

“At the time, the coverage formula — the means of linking the exercise of the unprecedented authority with the problem that warranted it — made sense. … Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically,” Roberts wrote.

The court threw out the original standards for preclearance but did not rule on the broader question of whether preclearance requirements in general are unconstitutional. The ruling therefore leaves the door open for Congress to write new standards.

“Congress — if it is to divide the States — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot rely simply on the past,” Roberts wrote.

Congressional Democrats criticized the majority opinion and said they would move quickly on a new set of standards.

"As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I intend to take immediate action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement.

Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006 with enormous bipartisan majorities — 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate.

But moving a new bill through today’s intensely polarized Congress could be far more difficult.

“I am deeply concerned that Congress will not have the will to fix what the Supreme Court has broken,” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said in a statement. “I call upon the members of this body to do what is right to insure free and fair access to the ballot box in this country.”

Critics of the court’s decision Tuesday called it an example of judicial activism, saying the justices should have deferred to Congress’s decision to leave the original preclearance standards in place.

Ginsburg, in her dissent, said the preclearance requirements have worked and that requiring federal approval before changes are made is the best way to prevent new forms of voter discrimination.

“The sad irony of today's decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effective,” she wrote.

Ginsburg read a portion of her dissent from the bench Tuesday, a step reserved for cases in which the dissenting justices feel especially strongly.

"Throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” Ginsburg said in her opinion.