The Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that determines which state and local government have to seek federal permission to change their voting laws, NBC News and Fox News reported on Tuesday. The 5-4 majority decision leaves the future of the law deeply uncertain because it will be up to Congress to redraw the map, news reports confirmed.
'In practice, in reality, it's probably the death knell of this provision," the publisher of SCOTUSblog and Supreme Court analyst Tom Goldstein said.
The case was brought by Shelby County, Alabama, which urged the Supreme Court to strike down both the permission requirement itself and the formula that determines which jurisdictions are covered, NBC News reported.
The Voting Rights Acts has required nine states with a history of discrimination at the polls, predominantly in the South, to get approval from the Justice Department or a special panel of judges before they change their voting laws. The rule also applies to 12 cities and 57 counties elsewhere.
The ruling is a heavy blow for civil rights advocates, who believe the loss of that section of the law could lead to an increase in attempts to deter minorities from voting, Reuters reported.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, accused the Supreme Court of leaving "millions of minority voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination before it occurs," Reuters quoted her as saying.
The law had been renewed most recently in 2006 but the coverage map still uses election data from 1972 to determine who is covered.
"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," Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
Roberts was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion and said that he would have struck down not just the map but the requirement that any jurisdiction get federal clearance to change a voting law.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissenting opinion and was joined by the three other members of the court's more liberal wing. She said that the court should defer to Congress.
"When confronting the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination, and the most fundamental right in our democratic system, Congress' power to act is at its height," Ginsburg wrote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been regarded as a landmark piece of national legislation in the U.S., outlawing discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans. The Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
