Supreme Court issues narrow Voting Rights Act ruling

Saying that “we are now a very different nation,” the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday raised questions about whether a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is still necessary. But the court decided to leave it intact for now.

The justices said states, counties, towns, school boards and utility districts, mostly in the South, no longer have to comply with the law if they can show their electoral procedures have not been blemished by discrimination over the past decade.

This is expected to lead to a procession of requests from local governments to “bail out” from the requirements of the act’s key enforcement tool — Section 5, which requires that changes in voting procedures be “precleared” by the Justice Department. There are more than 12,000 such political subdivisions.

The court’s review of the Voting Rights Act, passed during the era of Jim Crow, came just months after Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president. Civil rights advocates, fearful the high court would strike down a central provision of the law, expressed relief. Opponents of the law were pleased that the court appears poised to overturn Section 5 in the future.

By an 8-1 vote, the court sidestepped deciding whether Section 5 is constitutional, although Justice Clarence Thomas, in a partial dissent, said he would have overturned it. “Punishment for long past sins is not a legitimate basis for imposing a forward-looking preventative measure that has already served its purpose,” he said.

A number of justices have grave concerns about the constitutionality of the section, Emory University law professor Robert Schapiro said. “Those concerns indicate that the court may confront a case in the future directly addressing its constitutionality and might strike it down.”

Schapiro said the justices may be sending a message to Congress to go back and refine Section 5’s coverage and preclearance standards before the high court hears another challenge.

Writing for the near-unanimous court, Chief Justice John Roberts called the historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “undeniable.”

“Things have changed in the South,” Roberts wrote. Voter turnout and registration rates of whites and blacks are near parity, blatantly discriminatory voting practices are rare and minority candidates hold elective office at unprecedented levels.

“These improvements are no doubt due in significant part to the Voting Rights Act itself and stand as a monument to its success,” Roberts wrote. “Past success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain preclearance requirements.”

Roberts noted that Congress used election data that was more than three decades old when it overwhelmingly passed a 25-year extension to the law in 2006.

Roberts said the court did not get to the constitutional issue because its preference is to decide a case on narrow grounds when it can. “The importance of the question does not justify our rushing to decide it,” he added.

In the decision, the court allowed a small Austin, Texas, utility district that was formed in 1987 and had no history of discrimination to be exempted from the law.

Since 1982, only 17 jurisdictions — out of the more than 12,000 in the covered states — had been allowed to bail out of the act. It is unlikely Congress intended the provision to have such limited effect, Roberts said.

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Sharpsburg), one of only 33 lawmakers who voted against the act’s extension, said he hoped the ruling will be “a call to action” for Georgia counties and towns to begin asking to be exempt from coverage.

Westmoreland said he was optimistic “that the court’s dim view of Section 5 means the law will not survive for the full length of its 25-year renewal.”

Gov. Sonny Perdue, who urged the court in a personal legal brief to overturn Section 5, said the court made clear it “understands the significant burden placed on states is based on prior conduct that is not reflective of today’s realities.”

The governor said he looks forward to the day when all states are again treated the same, either by having Section 5 invalidated or having it broadened to cover all 50 states.

Thomas, the court’s only African-American justice, said when the law was enacted 44 years ago, Congress had good reason to believe states with a history of disenfranchising black voters would perpetuate that discrimination. “But there is no evidence that public officials stand ready, if given the chance, to again engage in concerted acts of violence terror and subterfuge in order to keep minorities from voting,” he wrote.

Thomas indicated he agreed with the contention in Perdue’s brief that it is nearly impossible for states to be excused from Section 5’s oversight. He noted that Perdue said it is a “logistical impossibility” for Georgia to meet the law’s threshold for exemption. (The opinion by Thomas, a Georgia native, misspelled the governor’s name “Purdue.”)

Debo Adegbile, litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the Texas district’s challenge had been hand-picked to “tear the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, and that effort failed.”

Some jurisdictions — even some states — will try to bail out from Section 5’s restrictions, Adegbile said. But Georgia should not expect such an exemption, given the Justice Department’s recent finding that the state’s voter verification system mistakenly flagged thousands of eligible voters, a disproportionate share of whom were minorities, he said.

Rob Simms, deputy secretary of state in Georgia, said it was unfortunate the court did not rule on the over-arching issue. But he expressed satisfaction that all nine justices were skeptical of the constitutionality of the section as it is applied today.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Atlanta) expressed satisfaction the law withstood a significant challenge. It remains, he said, “a powerful tool for voters who believe their voting rights are being violated, and [Section 5] preclearance continues to be the most effective legal means voters have today to protect themselves from present-day discriminatory voting laws and practices.”