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. 529 (more) 133 S. Ct. 2612; 186 L. Ed. 2d 651
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); cert. granted, 568 U.S. 1006 (2012).
Subsequent	Remanded, 541 F. App'x 1 (D.C. Cir. 2013); motion for attorneys' fees denied, 43 F. Supp. 3d 47 (D.D.C. 2014), affirmed sub. nom., Shelby County v. Lynch, 799 F.3d 1173 (D.C. Cir. 2015); cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 981 (2016).
Questions presented
Whether Congress' decision 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 Fifteenth Amendment and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution.
Holding
Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. § 10303) is unconstitutional; its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance.
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. amends. XIV, XV; Voting Rights Act of 1965

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was 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]

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]} Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 U.S. polling places had closed, many of them in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that changing and reducing voting locations can reduce voter turnout.^[6] There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls, and imposition of strict voter ID laws.^[11][12] A 2020 study found that jurisdictions that had previously been covered by preclearance substantially increased their voter registration purges after Shelby.^[13] Virtually all voting restrictions after the ruling were enacted by Republicans.^[14]