Shelby County v. Holder (2012)
- Docket
- 12-96
- Decided
- 2012-01-01
Summary
Question: Does the renewal of Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act under the constraints of Section 4(b) exceed Congress' authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and therefore violate the Tenth Amendment and Article Four of the Constitution? Conclusion: Yes, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. delivered the opinion of the 5-4 majority. The Court held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act imposes current burdens that are no longer responsive to the current conditions in the voting districts in question. Although the constraints this section places on specific states made sense in the 1960s and 1970s, they do not any longer and now represent an unconstitutional violation of the power to regulate elections that the Constitution reserves for the states. The Court also held that the formula for determining whether changes to a state's voting procedure should be federally reviewed is now outdated and does not reflect the changes that have occurred in the last 50 years in narrowing the voting turnout gap in the states in question. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional in addition to Section 4. He wrote that the blatant discrimination against certain voters that Section 5 was intended to prohibit is no longer evident. Without such extraordinary circumstances, Congress cannot constitutionally justify placing the burden of Section 5 on the states in question. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent in which she argued that Congress' power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments encompasses legislative action such as the Voting Rights Act. The legislative history and text of the Amendments as well as previous judicial precedent support Congress' authority to enact legislation that specifically targets potential state abuses. However, Congress does not have unlimited authority but must show that the means taken rationally advance a legitimate objective, as is the case with the Voting Rights Act. The evidence Congress gathered to determine whether to renew the Voting Rights Act sufficiently proved that there was still a current need to justify the burdens placed on the states in question. She also argued that, by holding Section 4 unconstitutional, the majority's opinion makes it impossible to effectively enforce Section 5. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.