On June 22, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation somehow just survived Supreme Court review. Voting rights experts had been on edge for months, nervously waiting for the Court to issue its decision in a closely watched case called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder (pdf). The case, a direct constitutional challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, seemed to give an increasingly conservative Supreme Court an opening to do the unthinkable and strike the law down. To the surprise of most observers — the Court stepped back from the precipice.
Widely considered to be the most effective civil rights law ever passed, the Voting Rights Act relies heavily on the “preclearance requirement” of Section 5. Under that provision, jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination must demonstrate in advance to the Department of Justice that changes to voting arrangements will not harm minority voters. Section 5 was originally passed in 1965, and renewed most recently in 2006, when a Republican-controlled Congress surveyed mountains of evidence, conducted lengthy hearings, and concluded that continuing racial discrimination in voting required Section 5 to remain in place.
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