Shelby County v. Holder

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Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), is a landmark decision [1] of the Supreme Court of the United States 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 subsection (b) of Section 4, which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting.[2] [3]

On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states.[2] [3] 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.[4]

Claims have been made that the ruling has made it easier for state officials to engage in voter suppression .[5] [6] Research shows that preclearance led to increases in minority congressional representation and minority voter turnout.[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 U.S. polling places had closed, many of them in predominantly African-American counties. There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls, and imposition of strict voter ID laws.[12] [13] A 2026 study found that the ruling increased the racial turnout gap, translating to hundreds of thousands of uncast ballots by voters of color in the 2022 election.[14]

These effects were concentrated in counties previously restrained by preclearance.[14] A 2011 study in the _American Political Science Review _ found that changing and reducing voting locations can reduce voter turnout.[6] In response to the ruling, some states have enacted State Voting Rights Acts that include comprehensive state-level preclearance programs modeled after Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 History

  • 2.1 District Court

  • 2.2 Court of Appeals

  • 2.3 Supreme Court

• 3 Opinion of the Supreme Court

  • 3.1 Concurrence

  • 3.2 Dissent

• 4 Reaction

  • 4.1 Public officials

  • 4.2 Others

• 5 Impact

  • 5.1 Alabama

  • 5.2 Arizona

  • 5.3 North Carolina

  • 5.4 North Dakota

  • 5.5 Ohio

  • 5.6 Texas

  • 5.7 Wisconsin

• 6 Legislative responses

• 7 See also

• 8 References

• 9 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shelby_County_v._Holder&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

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".[2] Section 5 of the Act requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal approval, or "preclearance", before changing voting laws or practices, to ensure the proposed changes do not "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group".[15] A preclearance determination must be issued by either the United States Attorney General or a panel of three judges serving on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia . Section 4(b) specifies the "coverage formula", or criteria, used to determine which states and local jurisdictions are subject to preclearance under Section 5. A jurisdiction is covered if a prohibited "test or device" was a requirement for voting or registering to vote as of November 1964, 1968, or 1972, and less than half of the eligible voting population was registered to vote or had voted in that year's election.[16] Section 4(a) allows covered jurisdictions to "bail out" of the preclearance requirement if they made sufficient progress in ending discriminatory voting practices.[16]

United States President Lyndon B. Johnson , Martin Luther King Jr. , and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

The Supreme Court upheld the preclearance requirement and coverage formula as constitutional enforcement legislation under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment in _South Carolina v. Katzenbach _ (1966).[17] The preclearance requirement initially was set to expire five years after enactment, but amendments to the Act in 1970, 1975, and 1982 reauthorized Section 5; the 1970 and 1975 amendments also updated the coverage formula.[2] [18] : 571  The Supreme Court upheld these reauthorizations as constitutional in _United States v. Georgia _ (1973),[19] _City of Rome v. United States _ (1980),[20] and Lopez v. Monterey County (1999).[2] : 5 [21] In 2006, Congress reauthorized Section 5 for an additional 25 years, but did not change the coverage formula from the 1975 version.[16]

Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from Section 5 preclearance and, in the alternative, ch

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