The following is from an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:
Tuesday's Supreme Court decision striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act won't bring back the worst excesses that inspired that landmark civil rights law. Blacks in the South seeking to register to vote don't need to fear that this represents a return to violence, harassment or humiliating literacy tests.
But the unwise 5-4 decision will make it easier for governments with a history of discrimination to engage in subtler forms of disenfranchisement. The ruling is an unjustified incursion by the court on a power explicitly conferred on Congress by the Constitution to protect voting rights, and it serves the interests of those who would make voting harder, not easier.
Enacted in 1965, the Voting Rights Act contains a nationwide prohibition against racial discrimination in voting. To provide timelier relief in states and localities with a history of discrimination, the law requires those jurisdictions to "pre-clear" changes in their election procedures with the U.S. Justice Department or a federal court in Washington.
Tuesday's decision did not declare the pre-clearance requirement unconstitutional. But in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court turned it into a dead letter by striking down the legal formula used to determine which jurisdictions must seek pre-clearance. It's true, as Roberts observed, that "things have changed in the South." But Congress also concluded that discrimination in the covered jurisdictions was still a problem and that pre-clearance had served an important deterrent effect.
In previous rulings upholding the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court deferred to Congress. Its refusal to do so this time is unnecessary and fraught with grave implications.