Shelby County v. Holder

Majority reasoning

The Court held that the Voting Rights Act's preclearance scheme departs sharply from ordinary principles of federalism and "equal sovereignty" among states, and such extraordinary measures can only be justified by extraordinary, current conditions. The majority found that conditions have changed dramatically since 1965: voter registration and turnout gaps between Black and white voters have nearly disappeared, blatant discrimination is rare, and minority officeholding has increased dramatically, largely because of the Act itself. Because the coverage formula still uses 1960s and 1970s data on literacy tests and low turnout—tests that have been illegal nationwide for over 40 years—the majority concluded it no longer reflects current needs and is not rationally tied to current conditions. The majority rejected the government's "reverse-engineered" defense of the formula and its argument that discrimination remaining in originally-identified states justifies continued coverage regardless of comparison to non-covered states, stating that history did not end in 1965. In response to the dissent's reliance on the legislative record, the majority stated that regardless of how the record is read, it does not show anything like the pervasive, flagrant discrimination that distinguished covered jurisdictions from the rest of the country in 1965, and that Congress never used its record to build a formula tied to current facts.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Ginsburg, writing for four justices, argued that Congress compiled a 15,000-page record showing that discrimination, though changed in form, remained concentrated in the covered jurisdictions, including "second-generation barriers" like racial gerrymandering, at-large voting schemes, and discriminatory annexation. She argued the proper standard of review is whether Congress had a rational basis for its judgment, a deferential standard the Court had applied in every prior VRA case, and that reauthorization of an existing, working remedy deserves special deference since a working remedy will naturally show less blatant discrimination than the original record. The dissent contended that Shelby County's own history—including recent redistricting maneuvers and a 2010 FBI investigation capturing lawmakers plotting to suppress Black turnout—showed the preclearance requirement was clearly constitutional as applied to it, and that the county's facial challenge should have failed for that reason alone. The dissent also argued the majority misapplied the "equal sovereignty" principle, which Katzenbach limited to the admission of new states, and warned that striking the formula was like "throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet," since the very success of preclearance in deterring discrimination was being used as a reason to end it.