Section 4(b) of the Act employs a formula to identify any State or political subdivision that used barriers to voting and had low voter registration or turnout in the 1960s and early 70s as a “covered jurisdiction.”  Section 5 provides that no “covered jurisdiction” can change its voting laws unless they are first approved by Congress. The legislation was successful at decreasing voter discrimination. Why the very richest Americans are refusing to take sides in the presidential race. In September 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and in May 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the district court that Section 5 was constitutional. He joined Britannica in 1989. This discrimination included impossible literacy tests, administered only to Black people and poor white people and devices like Mississippi’s notorious soap-bubble test, which required Black voters to correctly guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap in order to vote. Another concern shared by many of Shelby Countys amici is that the VRA impin… After the decision, Texas immediately implemented a stringent law that required voters to present photo IDs, and started to unilaterally close polling sites in a way that disadvantaged minority voters. When the act was passed in 1965, the covered jurisdictions included the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia.

Justice Ginsburg understood that the act was a levee keeping a whole press of problems at bay. Following is the case brief for Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013). The Court’s reasoning supports a finding that Section 5, requiring approval by Congress before voting laws are changed, is also unconstitutional. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law in Shelby County v. Holder. The four dissenting justices found it unusual that the Act’s success in combating voter discrimination means that it should be struck down. Black and Latino voters were hit hardest by long lines in the Texas Democratic primary, Joe Biden’s most surprising, and possibly important, answer of the debate. Justice Ginsburg took the majority to task for failing to honor that tradition, when she announced her opinion in Shelby County, quoting from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but adding her own emphasis, “The arc of the moral universe is long…but it bends toward justice if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”. Thirty-nine counties in North Carolina and one in Arizona fell within it. A decisive win, powered mostly by character. The future Justice Ginsburg hoped to evoke in her dissents, where protection for everyone’s voting rights would be the law of the land, looked even more distant as House Republicans presented nearly unanimous opposition to HR 4, a new voting rights act that passed the House in 2019, and the Senate refused to hold a floor vote on the bill.

The world already had low views of the US due to Trump. According to the dissent, Congress had sufficient evidence to re-authorize the Voting Rights Act for 25 years in 2006.

This was never truer than when she found herself in the minority in the voting rights case, Shelby County v. Holder, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. Whether Congresss decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the VRA under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) exceeded its authority under the Fifteenth Amendment and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution. The Voting Rights Act departs “sharply” from those principles because the “covered jurisdictions” are only nine States and several other counties.

By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. How often do those formulas have to be updated to remain constitutional? The lack of access to polling stations and the ensuing chaos on Super Tuesday also isn’t good news for Democrats who are hoping to flip the state blue in 2020 for the first time since 1976. The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute, striving to uphold the values of democracy. of Health. After the city was forced to redo its plan in compliance with the act, a new election was held and the council member regained his seat. The original act was set to expire after five years, but Congress amended and reauthorized it several times. As a practical matter this means that Section 5 is inoperable until Congress enacts a new coverage formula, which the decision invited Congress to do. But there were two he refused to reject. It had accomplished its goal, Justice Roberts wrote on behalf of the majority. “Throwing out preclearance 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,” she wrote. The Court left it to Congress to create a new coverage formula for Section 4. Shelby County v. Holder, legal case, decided on June 25, 2013, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared (5–4) unconstitutional Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which set forth a formula for determining which jurisdictions were required (under Section 5 of the act) to seek federal approval of any proposed change to their electoral laws or procedures (“preclearance”). Shelby County argues that with an African American president elected twice, the VRA of 1965 has outlived its necessity.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia, created a new voting plan without submitting it for preclearance, prohibited people who had been convicted of a felony from voting, purge voter rolls and gerrymander districts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lost Her Battle to Save Voting Rights.

Even worse was the fact that a county employee charged with protecting the public felt comfortable sharing it with a stranger, as though every white person in the courthouse in Shelby County would share his views. Like many others across the country, I am deeply disappointed with … Congress re-authorized the Act with a 1975 version of Section 4 for 25 years in 1982 and again in 2006. Shelby County, Ala., just south of Birmingham, sued then-Attorney General Eric Holder in federal court in the District of Columbia in April 2010, arguing parts of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional. A statute must be sufficiently related to the problem it is trying to solve. It was a form of deterrence, encouraging states to maintain fair electoral laws because unfair additions might be rejected, he argued. Not all of the states that passed laws in the wake of Shelby County v. Holder were ones previously covered by the Voting Rights Act. The Brennan Center crafts innovative policies and fights for them in Congress and the courts. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act — which determines which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 — is unconstitutional because it is based on an old formula. The House and Senate Judiciaries held 21 hearings, Justice Ginsburg wrote, and compiled a record of more than 15,000 pages. The case’s legal underpinnings are somewhat complicated but worth tracing. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Oregon v. Mitchell: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, The Civil Rights Act of 1866: History and Impact, The Original Jurisdiction of the US Supreme Court, Katzenbach v. Morgan: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Reynolds v. Sims: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Shaw v. Reno: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Civil Rights Legislation and Supreme Court Cases, How Grandfather Clauses Disenfranchised African American Voters, Guinn v. United States: A First Step to Voter Rights for African Americans, Mistretta v. United States: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Washington v. Davis: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Indian Citizenship Act: Granted Citizenship but Not Voting Rights, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/07/how-has-voting-changed-since-shelby-county-v-holder/?utm_term=.8aebab060c6c, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/, news.vice.com/en_us/article/kz58qx/how-the-gutting-of-the-voting-rights-act-led-to-closed-polls.