ORIGINAL POST (SEE UPDATE BELOW):

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, but not the one everyone thought was at issue.

The justices did not address Section 5, which requires certain jurisdictions -- including whole states such as Georgia -- to seek and receive "preclearance" from federal authorities before any changes to their election laws can take effect. Rather, a 5-4 majority of the court struck down Section 4, which sets the test for deciding which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5. Recognizing that the test made sense when the law was originally passed in 1965, the court's majority opinion states:

"Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests havebeen banned for over 40 years. And voter registration and turnout numbers in covered States have risen dramatically."

The court also notes:

"Section 2 of the Act, which bans any 'standard, practice, or procedure' that 'results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen ... to vote on account of race or color,' ... applies nationwide, is permanent, and is not at issue in this case."

Together, these statements essentially summarize the argument by those who wanted Section 5 struck down. Some states that are subject to preclearance no longer meet the test for determining their status, while other states that can change their election laws without Washington's approval would now flunk the test. The specific rationale for determining which states are which no longer applies as it did.

It would appear at first glance -- and I haven't had time to read the entire decision yet -- that this may have been a compromise decision because there was not a majority in favor of either upholding the VRA completely or of eliminating preclearance for good. The decision hands to Congress the responsibility for establishing a new test, and I have to wonder if that will effectively sideline Section 5: Given the way Congress has worked (or not) of late, what are the odds the House and Senate can agree to a new formula for deciding which states are subject to preclearance?

More on the decision as I read through it. But it appears to be a significant victory for Georgia and other jurisdictions (Shelby County, Ala., brought the case in question) that believed they were being unfairly singled out and treated differently for actions and practices that ended almost a half-century ago.

UPDATE at 11:55 a.m.:

A couple of themes emerge from a reading of the entire majority opinion. First is the court's recognition of the "extraordinary measures" the Voting Rights Act takes, particularly in the form of Section 5's preclearance provision, to address the "extraordinary problem" of racially discriminatory voting laws circa 1965. There is no desire on the justices' part to deny the problem that existed back then or to bemoan the steps Congress took then to deal with it. There is no need for anyone to deny the problems then in order to support changing the remedy as it's applied in 2013.

The majority is unconcerned about discrimination -- which, it notes, "still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act's extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements."

Speaking to the need for strong protections, the court notes "injunctive relief is available in appropriate cases to block voting laws from going into effect" if they would violate Section 2's protections. Furthermore, "Section 5 now forbids voting changes with 'any discriminatory purpose' as well as voting changes that diminish the ability of citizens, on account of race, color, or language minority status, 'to elect their preferred candidates of choice.' "

Rather, and this is the second theme, the court has no patience with later Congresses that took no account of the changing facts. The court warned of this impatience in its 2009 decision in Northwest Austin, a case concerning a Texas utility district's attempt to "bail out" of preclearance requirements. (That decision was 8-1, and as the majority ruling notes, "the remaining [justice] would have held the Act unconstitutional.")

"By 2009," Chief Justice John Roberts writes for the majority, " 'the racial gap in voter registration and turnout [was] lower in the States originally covered by [Section] 5 than it [was] nationwide.' " The court included a table in its majority opinion showing the difference between white and black voting rates in 1965 and then in 2004. In Georgia, for instance, black turnout went from being a fraction of white turnout, 27.4 percent vs. 62.6 percent, to outpacing white turnout, 64.2 percent to 63.5 percent. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina showed similar gains during those 39 years.

"Since that time," Roberts continues, "Census Bureau data indicate that African- American voter turnout has come to exceed white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by [Section] 5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent."

Roberts acknowledges that Congress compiled a large amount of historical data before reauthorizing the VRA in its entirety in 2006. Then he argues:

"Regardless of how to look at the record, however, no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the 'pervasive,' 'flagrant,' 'widespread,' and 'rampant' discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation at that time. ... But a more fundamental problem remains: Congress did not use the record it compiled to shape a coverage formula grounded in current conditions. It instead reenacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day."

The ruling also notes another change amonf the states subject to preclearance: "In the first decade after enactment of [Section] 5, the Attorney General objected to 14.2 percent of proposed voting changes. ... In the last decade before reenactment, the Attorney General objected to a mere 0.16 percent."

Emphasizing the drastic nature of Section 5's imposition on some states but not others, the court noted the Constitution and case law leave states with great leeway to set election laws. But, despite the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution and federal laws over state laws, "The Federal Government does not ... have a general right to review and veto state enactments before they go into effect. A proposal to grant such authority to 'negative' state laws was considered at the Constitutional Convention, but rejected in favor of allowing state laws to take effect, subject to later challenge under the Supremacy Clause."

The effect of preclearance, Roberts notes, is not trivial:

"While one State waits months or years and expends funds to implement a validly enacted law, its neighbor can typically put the same law into effect immediately, through the normal legislative process. Even if a noncovered jurisdiction is sued, there are important differences between those proceedings and preclearance proceedings; the preclearance proceeding 'not only switches the burden of proof to the supplicant jurisdiction, but also applies substantive standards quite different from those governing the rest of the nation.' "

That's true, and enough progress has been made to justify lifting that extra burden from states that no longer exhibit the kind of behaviors that warranted their extra scrutiny in 1965.