DOJ invoked §5 to block the proposal. This experience exposes the inaccuracy of the Court’s portrayal of the Act as static, unchanged since 1965. In the alternative, the covered jurisdiction may seek approval by a three-judge District Court in the District of Columbia. But Congress also found that voting discrimination had evolved into subtler second-generation barriers, and that eliminating preclearance would risk loss of the gains that had been made. See §2(b)(1), 120 Stat. 51, App. The dissent acknowledged voter discrimination had decreased, but attributed it to the Voting Rights Act itself. SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA v. HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL, et al. Circuit, and now seeks review before the Supreme Court. Katzenbach, supra, at 308, 315, 331; Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 201. 13–17. In 1970, Congress reauthorized the Act for another five years, and extended the coverage formula in §4(b) to jurisdictions that had a voting test and less than 50 percent voter registration or turnout as of 1968. S. Rep. No. 1992). As we approach the November election, it is critical that everyone has an equal opportunity to vote and that every vote be counted. The Continuing Need for Section 5 Pre-Clearance: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. The tests and devices that blocked access to the ballot have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. Other covered jurisdictions, amicihere, complain that the VRA’s restrictions subject them to a double standard and infringe on their state sovereignty rights. The Court has time and again declined to upset legislation of this genre unless there was no or almost no evidence of unconstitutional action by States. The Attorney General has 60 days to object to a preclearance request, longer if he requests more information. It suspends “all changes to state election law—however innocuous—until they have been precleared by federal authorities in Washington, D. C.” Id., at 202. In May 2006, the bills that became the VRA’s reauthorization were introduced in both Houses. This process is known as preclearance. The District Court upheld the Act, and the D.C. No. Ultimately, however, the Court’s construction of the bailout provision left the constitutional issues for another day. A similar approach is warranted here.9. The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. The decision of the D.C. Court of Civil Appeals is reversed. Each time, this Court upheld the reauthorization as a valid exercise of congressional power. Petitioner argues voter registration and turnout are more equal in covered than in uncovered jurisdictions. VI, cl. Section 5 now forbids voting changes with “any discriminatory purpose” as well as voting changes that diminish the ability of citizens, on account of race, color, or language minority status, “to elect their preferred candidates of choice.” 42 U. S. C. §§1973c(b)–(d). (a) In Northwest Austin, this Court noted that the Voting Rights Act “imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs” and concluded that “a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute’s disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” 557 U. S., at 203. On that matter of cause and effects there can be no genuine doubt. Arguing, however, that bailout is an ineffective way to cure the irrationality of the coverage formula, Shelby County points out that only a tiny fraction of covered jurisdictions have successfully bailed out of preclearance. A recent FBI investigation provides a further window into the persistence of racial discrimination in state politics. “[T]he conditions that originally justified [§5] no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.” Ante, at 2. The law "limits the kind of identification that voters can use at the polls to a North Carolina driver’s license, a state-issued ID card, a military ID, or a U.S. As the Court aptly notes: “[N]o one can fairly say that [the record] shows anything approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation at that time.” Ante, at 21. The Government has a fallback argument—because the formula was relevant in 1965, its continued use is permissible so long as any discrimination remains in the States identified in 1965. The court below and the parties have debated what that record shows—they have gone back and forth about whether to compare covered to noncovered jurisdictions as blocks, how to disaggregate the data State by State, how to weigh §2 cases as evidence of ongoing discrimination, and whether to consider evidence not before Congress, among other issues. imposed or applied . The District Judge presiding over the criminal trial at which the recorded conversations were introduced commented that the “re cordings represent compelling evidence that political exclusion through racism remains a real and enduring problem” in Alabama. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. Census Bureau data from the most recent election indicate that African-American voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by §5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent. Under these provisions, jurisdictions may either be added or removed from the preclearance requirement depending on whether it is shown that for the past ten years they have not violated the VRA. Inspired to action by the civil rights movement, Congress responded in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. Congress, the Court decrees, must “star[t] from scratch.” Ante, at 23. In light of this rec- ord, Congress had more than a reasonable basis to conclude that the existing coverage formula was not out of sync with conditions on the ground in covered areas. Art. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari. The authors would like to thank former Supreme Court Reporter of Decisions Frank Wagner for his assistance in editing this preview. Since 1965, it has enabled millions of Black, Latinx, Asian American and Native American citizens who were previously denied suffrage an equal opportunity to cast a ballot. See Dillard v. Crenshaw Cty., 748 F. Supp. By the time the Act was reauthorized in 2006, there had been 40 more years of it. In a 5-4 decision, the Court reasoned that the coverage formula was out of date – despite Congress’s determination Two years before Pleasant Grove, the Court in Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U. S. 222 (1985), struck down a provision of the Alabama Constitution that prohibited individuals convicted of misdemeanor offenses “involving moral turpitude” from voting. And “[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 1 G. Santayana, The Life of Reason 284 (1905).

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