User:Prototime/Drafts/Shelby County v. Holder

Shelby County v. Holder
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 27, 2013 Decided June 25, 2013
Full case name	Shelby County, Alabama, Petitioner v. Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, et al.
Docket no.	12-96
Citations	570 U.S. ___ (more)
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Petition denied, 811 F. Supp. 2d 424 (D.D.C. 2011); decision affirmed, 679 F.3d 848 (D.C. Cir. 2012)
Holding
Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Roberts, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito
Concurrence	Thomas
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XV; Voting Rights Act of 1965

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. ___ (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subjected to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting.

On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Section 4(b) is unconstitutional because the coverage formula is based on data over 40 years old and therefore is no longer responsive to current needs. Thus, the current coverage formula may no longer be used to subject jurisdictions to Section 5 preclearance. The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.

Background

Legal context

Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, "an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution." Section 5 of the Act contains a "preclearance" requirement that requires certain states and local governments receive a determination by the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that changes to their voting laws or practices do not "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group" before those changes may be enforced. Section 4(b) contains the coverage formula that determines which states and local governments are subject to preclearance under Section 5. The formula covers jurisdictions that, as of November 1964, November 1968, or November 1972, maintained a prohibited "test or device" as a condition of registering to vote or voting and had a voting-age population of which less than 50 percent either were registered to vote or actually voted in that year's presidential election. Section 4(a) allows covered jurisdictions that have made sufficient progress in ending discriminatory voting practices to "bail out" of the preclearance requirement. The Supreme Court upheld these provisions as constitutional under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) and again in Rome v. United States (1980).

Section 5 of the Act was initially set to expire five years after enactment, but subsequent amendments to the Act have extended Section 5's applicability and modified the coverage formula. In 2006, Section 5 was reauthorized for an additional 25 years, but the coverage formula was not changed from the 1972 version.

Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from Section 5 preclearance and, in the alternative, challenged the constitutionality of Section 5 preclearance. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder that all government entities, including the utility district, had the right to file suit to bail out of the A coverage, and it overturned a lower court ruling that the district was not eligible to seek a bailout because it did not register voters. Because this decision resolved the issue, the Court invoked constitutional avoidance and declined to address the constitutionality of Section 5. Justice Thomas dissented from this portion of the opinion and would have declared Section 5 unconstitutional.

Arguments

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on February 27, 2013. Coverage of the Justices' comments during oral arguments portrayed the Court as appearing likely to hold Section 5 or Section 4(b) unconstitutional.

Justice Antonin Scalia drew criticism from civil rights leaders after expressing his belief during oral arguments that Congress reauthorized Section 5 not because the legislation was necessary but because it constituted a "racial entitlement" that Congress was unlikely to end.

Procedural history

Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued the U.S. Attorney General in the U.S. District Court for D.C. in Washington, D.C, seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement. On September 21, 2011, Judge John D. Bates upheld the provisions, finding that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing Section 5 and continuing Section 4(b)'s coverage formula.

On May 18, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the decision of the District Court upholding the constitutionality of Section 4(b) and Section 5. After surveying the evidence in the Congressional record associated with the 2006 reauthorization of Section 5, the appellate court accepted Congress's conclusion that Section 2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, that Section 5 was therefore still justified, and that the coverage formula continued to pass constitutional muster.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear the case on the limited question of "whether Congress' decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution."

Opinion of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and struck down Section 4(b) as unconstitutional in its June 25, 2013 ruling. The majority opinion was delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts and was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. After noting federalism concerns raised by the Section 5 preclearance requirement and concerns that Section 4's disparate coverage imposed on the principle of equal sovereignty among the states, the opinion conveyed that the Section 4(b) coverage formula exceeded Congress' power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution because it is "based on 40 year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day" and thus is not responsive to current conditions. The Court expressed that Congress cannot subject a jurisdiction to preclearance based simply on past discrimination, and it noted that since the coverage formula was last modified in 1972, the 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". The Court did not strike down Section 5; however, because the Section 5 preclearance requirement applies only to jurisdictions covered by the Section 4(b) coverage formula, the decision rendered Section 5 inoperable unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.

Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion expressing his view that Section 5 is also unconstitutional for the same reasons the Court held Section 4(b) unconstitutional.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The dissent would have held that Congress had sufficient evidence before it to determine that the coverage formula remained responsive to current needs. The dissent acknowledged that discrimination in voting has decreased in the covered jurisdictions since the Voting Rights Act's enactment, but it attributed much of that decrease to the Act itself, noting that "[t]hrowing 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."

Reaction

The Supreme Court opinion prompted heavy media coverage of reactions from political leaders, activists, and the legal community. President Barack Obama expressed deep disappointment with the decision and called on Congress "to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls." Attorney General Eric Holder also expressed disappointment with the decision, and he pledged that the Department of Justice "will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling by hindering eligible citizens' full and free exercise of the franchise."

Speaker John Boehner acknowledged the importance of the role of the Voting Rights Act over the previous 40 years and said that he was still reviewing the decision and trying to determine the next steps. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor expressed his hope that Congress would "put politics aside" and determine how to ensure that voting rights remain protected. Representative John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement who was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, said that the decision disregarded the country's history of voting discrimination and that he fears the decision will allow local election officials "to go back to another period." Representative Bob Goodlatte, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the committee will review new voting data but that he is unsure whether the committee will take any specific action in response to the decision.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that Democrats were concerned with the ruling in light of "Republicans doing everything they could to suppress voting" in the 2012 elections, and he stated that the Senate will act to address the decision. Senator Bob Corker, however, said that he "cannot imagine" Congress ever agreeing on the terms of a new coverage formula. The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin holding hearings on July 17, 2013 to discuss how to respond to the decision.

At the state level, Texas and Mississippi officials pledged within hours of the decision to enforce voter ID laws that had previously not been precleared by the Attorney General. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said it made no sense for five Florida counties to be subjected to preclearance based on decades-old voting rights data and that the decision will save the state money. However, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo found the decision deeply troubling and called upon Congress to pass a new coverage formula.

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute said that the Supreme Court's decision "restore[d] the constitutional order, the status quo ante the temporary Sections 4/5, because there is no longer systemic racial disenfranchisement, or at the very least in the covered jurisdictions." In contrast, Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that because of the decision, "[m]inority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades" and that their only recourse now will be to pursue expensive litigation.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 570
• 2012 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

External links

• Oyez: Shelby County v. Holder