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Voting Rights Act Case Study

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The Voting Rights Act was implemented in 1965 to combat the country’s long history of voting discrimination. Section 5 created a preclearance rule for certain districts, requiring that they must seek approval from the attorney general before making any changes to their voting procedures (Oyez 2018, Shelby County). Section 4(b) creates the formula for Section 5, mapping out the districts eligible for preclearance. Under Section 4(b), any state or district that had certain voting test in place or had a turnout of less than 50% for the 1964 presidential election, would be the eligible areas required for federal review. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, with a nearly unanimous vote from both houses, establishing an extensive congressional record proving the original …show more content…

In 2013, Shelby County v. Holder was decided. The Supreme ruled, in a five to four decision, that Section 4(b) violated that Constitution, but did not answer the question regarding the constitutionality of Section 5 (Shelby County v. Holder 2013, on 24). Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito joined the majority, while Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan dissented (Oyez 2018, Shelby County). In the opinion, the Court held that, since voting discrimination has significantly improved, seeing as to how literacy test and other measures were eliminated nation wide and the number of African American voters drastically increased, and since there is a “tradition of equal sovereignty” to the states, Section 4(b) must be struck down (Shelby County v. Holder 2013, on 11). This means that the Court no longer feels that the formula for Section 5 is the appropriate, given that it uses an outdated method to determine

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