In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C.) Circuit in Shelby County v. Holder upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the case, Shelby County, Alabama alleged that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority when it reauthorized Section 5 of the act in 2006 for a period of 25 years.
Section 5 requires certain state and local governments (“covered jurisdictions”) with a history of discriminatory voting practices to obtain approval from the Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for D.C. before implementing any change affecting voting. Specifically, preclearance applies to any attempt to change “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting...in any covered jurisdiction.”
The court affirmed a district court decision that Section 5 remained a “’congruent and proportional’ remedy to the 21st century problem of voting discrimination in covered jurisdictions,” and that failing to reauthorize it would leave minority citizens with inadequate remedies against discriminatory voting laws. It noted that, in reauthorizing the act, Congress compiled a 15,000 page record that found numerous contemporary examples of discrimination in the covered jurisdictions, thus showing a continued need for preclearance.
Shelby County will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
