Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/
Timestamp: 2020-08-07 16:02:00
Document Index: 441881703

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1973', '§1973', '§5', '§1973', '§5', '§5', '§5', '§5', '§2', '§2', '§2', '§2', '§2', '§2', '§5', '§1973', '§2', '§5', '§5', '§5', '§4']

Shelby County v. Holder :: 570 U.S. 529 (2013) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 570 › Shelby County v. Holder
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. 1973(a), was enacted to address racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 bans any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen ... to vote on account of race or color,” applies nationwide, and is permanent. Other sections apply to some parts of the country. Section 4 defines “covered jurisdictions” as states or political subdivisions that maintained tests or devices as prerequisites to voting and had low voter registration or turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. Section 5 provides that no change in voting procedures can take effect in covered jurisdictions until approved by federal authorities (preclearance). The coverage formula and preclearance requirement were to expire after five years, but the Act was reauthorized. In 2006, the Act was reauthorized for an additional 25 years, but coverage still turned on whether a jurisdiction had a voting test and low registration or turnout almost 50 years ago. Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sought a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional. The district court upheld the Act. The D. C. Circuit affirmed. A 5-4 Supreme Court reversed, finding Section 4 unconstitutional. Its formula may not be used to require preclearance. States have broad autonomy in structuring their governments and pursuing legislative objectives; the Tenth Amendment reserves to states “the power to regulate elections.” There is a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” among the states. The Voting Rights Act departs from those principles by requiring states to request federal permission to implement laws that they would otherwise have the right to enact and execute. The Act applies to only nine states (and additional counties). In 1966, the departures were justified by racial discrimination that had “infected the electoral process in parts of our country for nearly a century” so that the coverage formula was rational in practice and theory. Nearly 50 years later, “things have changed dramatically.” Voter turnout and registration rates in covered jurisdictions approach parity; blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. Minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels. Congress, if it is to continue to divide the states, must identify jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense under current conditions. Data compiled by Congress before reauthorizing the Act did not show anything like the pervasive, rampant discrimination found in covered jurisdictions in 1965. Congress reenacted the formula based on 40-year-old facts with no logical relation to the present day.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted 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.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 . Section 2 of the Act, which bans any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen . . . to vote on account of race or color,” 42 U. S. C. §1973(a), applies nationwide, is permanent, and is not at issue in this case. Other sections apply only to some parts of the country. Section 4 of the Act provides the “coverage formula,” defining the “covered jurisdictions” as States or political subdivisions that maintained tests or devices as prerequisites to voting, and had low voter registration or turnout, in the 1960s and early 1970s. §1973b(b). In those covered jurisdictions, §5 of the Act provides that no change in voting procedures can take effect until approved by specified federal authorities in Washington, D. C. §1973c(a). Such approval is known as “preclearance.”
The coverage formula and preclearance requirement were initially set to expire after five years, but the Act has been reauthorized several times. In 2006, the Act was reauthorized for an additional 25 years, but the coverage formula was not changed. Coverage still turned on whether a jurisdiction had a voting test in the 1960s or 1970s, and had low voter registration or turnout at that time. Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from the Act’s coverage and, in the alternative, challenged the Act’s constitutionality. This Court resolved the challenge on statutory grounds, but expressed serious doubts about the Act’s continued constitutionality. See Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193 .
(1) State legislation may not contravene federal law. States retain broad autonomy, however, in structuring their governments and pursuing legislative objectives. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment reserves to the States all powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government, including “the power to regulate elections.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 –462. There is also a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” among the States, which is highly pertinent in assessing disparate treatment of States. Northwest Austin, supra, at 203.
In the Court’s view, the very success of §5 of the Voting Rights Act demands its dormancy. Congress was of another mind. Recognizing that large progress has been made, Congress determined, based on a voluminous record, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated. The question this case presents is who decides whether, as currently operative, §5 remains justifiable, [ 1 ] this Court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to enforce the post-Civil War Amendments “by appropriate legislation.” With overwhelming support in both Houses, Congress concluded that, for two prime reasons, §5 should continue in force, unabated. First, continuance would facilitate completion of the impressive gains thus far made; and second, continuance would guard against backsliding. Those assessments were well within Congress’ province to make and should elicit this Court’s unstinting approbation.
A century after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteed citizens the right to vote free of discrimination on the basis of race, the “blight of racial discrimination in voting” continued to “infec[t] the electoral process in parts of our country.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 308 (1966) . Early attempts to cope with this vile infection resembled battling the Hydra. Whenever one form of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang up in its place. This Court repeatedly encountered the remarkable “variety and persistence” of laws disenfranchising minority citizens. Id., at 311. To take just one example, the Court, in 1927, held unconstitutional a Texas law barring black voters from participating in primary elections, Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536 ; in 1944, the Court struck down a “reenacted” and slightly altered version of the same law, Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 ; and in 1953, the Court once again confronted an attempt by Texas to “circumven[t]” the Fifteenth Amendment by adopting yet another variant of the all-white primary, Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 .
During this era, the Court recognized that discrimination against minority voters was a quintessentially political problem requiring a political solution. As Justice Holmes explained: If “the great mass of the white population intends to keep the blacks from voting,” “relief from [that] great political wrong, if done, as alleged, by the people of a State and the State itself, must be given by them or by the legislative and political department of the government of the United States.” Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475, 488 (1903) .
Although the VRA wrought dramatic changes in the realization of minority voting rights, the Act, to date, surely has not eliminated all vestiges of discrimination against the exercise of the franchise by minority citizens. Jurisdictions covered by the preclearance requirement continued to submit, in large numbers, proposed changes to voting laws that the Attorney General declined to approve, auguring that barriers to minority voting would quickly resurface were the preclearance remedy elimi-nated. City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 181 (1980) . Congress also found that as “registration and voting of minority citizens increas[ed], other measures may be resorted to which would dilute increasing minority voting strength.” Ibid. (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 94–196, p. 10 (1975)). See also Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 640 (1993) (“[I]t soon became apparent that guaranteeing equal access to the polls would not suffice to root out other racially discriminatory voting practices” such as voting dilution). Efforts to reduce the impact of minority votes, in contrast to direct attempts to block access to the bal- lot, are aptly described as “second-generation barriers” to minority voting.
Second-generation barriers come in various forms. One of the blockages is racial gerrymandering, the redrawing of legislative districts in an “effort to segregate the races for purposes of voting.” Id., at 642. Another is adoption of a system of at-large voting in lieu of district-by-district voting in a city with a sizable black minority. By switching to at-large voting, the overall majority could control the election of each city council member, effectively eliminating the potency of the minority’s votes. Grofman & Davidson, The Effect of Municipal Election Structure on Black Representation in Eight Southern States, in Quiet Revolution in the South 301, 319 (C. Davidson & B. Grofman eds. 1994) (hereinafter Quiet Revolution). A similar effect could be achieved if the city engaged in discriminatory annexation by incorporating majority-white areas into city limits, thereby decreasing the effect of VRA-occasioned increases in black voting. Whatever the device employed, this Court has long recognized that vote dilution, when adopted with a discriminatory purpose, cuts down the right to vote as certainly as denial of access to the ballot. Shaw, 509 U. S., at 640–641; Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 569 (1969) ; Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 555 (1964) . See also H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, p. 6 (2006) (although “[d]iscrimination today is more subtle than the visible methods used in 1965,” “the effect and results are the same, namely a diminishing of the minority community’s ability to fully participate in the electoral process and to elect their preferred candidates”).
In the long course of the legislative process, Congress “amassed a sizable record.” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 205 (2009) . See also 679 F. 3d 848, 865–873 (CADC 2012) (describing the “extensive record” supporting Congress’ determina-tion that “serious and widespread intentional discrimination persisted in covered jurisdictions”). The House and Senate Judiciary Committees held 21 hearings, heard from scores of witnesses, received a number of investigative reports and other written documentation of continuing discrimina-tion in covered jurisdictions. In all, the legislative record Congress compiled filled more than 15,000 pages. H. R. Rep. 109–478, at 5, 11–12; S. Rep. 109–295, at 2–4, 15. The compilation presents countless “examples of fla-grant racial discrimination” since the last reauthoriza-tion; Congress also brought to light systematic evidence that “intentional racial discrimination in voting remains so serious and widespread in covered jurisdictions that section 5 preclearance is still needed.” 679 F. 3d, at 866.
In answering this question, the Court does not write on a clean slate. It is well established that Congress’ judgment regarding exercise of its power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments warrants substantial deference. The VRA addresses the combination of race discrimination and the right to vote, which is “preservative of all rights.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 370 (1886) . When confronting the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination, and the most fundamental right in our democratic system, Congress’ power to act is at its height.
The basis for this deference is firmly rooted in both constitutional text and precedent. The Fifteenth Amendment, which targets precisely and only racial discrimination in voting rights, states that, in this domain, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” [ 2 ] In choosing this language, the Amendment’s framers invoked Chief Justice Marshall’s formulation of the scope of Congress’ powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause:
It cannot tenably be maintained that the VRA, an Act of Congress adopted to shield the right to vote from racial discrimination, is inconsistent with the letter or spirit of the Fifteenth Amendment, or any provision of the Constitution read in light of the Civil War Amendments. Nowhere in today’s opinion, or in Northwest Austin, [ 3 ] is there clear recognition of the transformative effect the Fifteenth Amendment aimed to achieve. Notably, “the Founders’ first successful amendment told Congress that it could ‘make no law’ over a certain domain”; in contrast, the Civil War Amendments used “language [that] authorized transformative new federal statutes to uproot all vestiges of unfreedom and inequality” and provided “sweeping enforcement powers . . . to enact ‘appropriate’ legislation targeting state abuses.” A. Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography 361, 363, 399 (2005). See also McConnell, Institutions and Interpretation: A Critique of City of Boerne v. Flores, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 153, 182 (1997) (quoting Civil War-era framer that “the remedy for the violation of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments was expressly not left to the courts. The remedy was legislative.”).
The stated purpose of the Civil War Amendments was to arm Congress with the power and authority to protect all persons within the Nation from violations of their rights by the States. In exercising that power, then, Congress may use “all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted” to the constitutional ends declared by these Amendments. McCulloch, 4 Wheat., at 421. So when Congress acts to enforce the right to vote free from racial discrimination, we ask not whether Congress has chosen the means most wise, but whether Congress has rationally selected means appropriate to a legitimate end. “It is not for us to review the congressional resolution of [the need for its chosen remedy]. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.” Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641, 653 (1966) .
This is not to suggest that congressional power in this area is limitless. It is this Court’s responsibility to ensure that Congress has used appropriate means. The question meet for judicial review is whether the chosen means are “adapted to carry out the objects the amendments have in view.” Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 346 (1880) . The Court’s role, then, is not to substitute its judgment for that of Congress, but to determine whether the legislative record sufficed to show that “Congress could rationally have determined that [its chosen] provisions were appropriate methods.” City of Rome, 446 U. S., at 176–177.
In addition to blocking proposed voting changes through preclearance, DOJ may request more information from a jurisdiction proposing a change. In turn, the jurisdiction may modify or withdraw the proposed change. The number of such modifications or withdrawals provides an indication of how many discriminatory proposals are deterred without need for formal objection. Congress received evidence that more than 800 proposed changes were altered or withdrawn since the last reauthorization in 1982. H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, at 40–41. [ 4 ] Congress also received empirical studies finding that DOJ’s requests for more information had a significant effect on the degree to which covered jurisdictions “compl[ied] with their obligatio[n]” to protect minority voting rights. 2 Evidence of Continued Need 2555.
In 2006, this Court found that Texas’ attempt to redraw a congressional district to reduce the strength of Latino voters bore “the mark of intentional discrimination that could give rise to an equal protection violation,” and ordered the district redrawn in compliance with the VRA. League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 440 (2006) . In response, Texas sought to undermine this Court’s order by curtailing early voting in the district, but was blocked by an action to enforce the §5 preclearance requirement. See Order in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Texas, No. 06–cv–1046 (WD Tex.), Doc. 8.
These examples, and scores more like them, fill the pages of the legislative record. The evidence was indeed sufficient to support Congress’ conclusion that “racial discrimination in voting in covered jurisdictions [remained] serious and pervasive.” 679 F. 3d, at 865. [ 5 ]
Congress learned of these conditions through a report, known as the Katz study, that looked at §2 suits between 1982 and 2004. To Examine the Impact and Effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 964–1124 (2005) (hereinafter Impact and Effectiveness). Because the private right of action authorized by §2 of the VRA applies nationwide, a comparison of §2 lawsuits in covered and noncovered jurisdictions provides an appropriate yardstick for measuring differences between covered and noncovered jurisdictions. If differences in the risk of voting discrimination between covered and noncovered jurisdictions had disappeared, one would expect that the rate of successful §2 lawsuits would be roughly the same in both areas. [ 6 ] The study’s findings, however, indicated that racial discrimination in voting remains “concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 203.
Shelby County launched a purely facial challenge to the VRA’s 2006 reauthorization. “A facial challenge to a legislative Act,” the Court has other times said, “is, of course, the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, since the challenger must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.” United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739, 745 (1987) .
“[U]nder our constitutional system[,] courts are not roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity of the Nation’s laws.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601 –611 (1973). Instead, the “judicial Power” is limited to deciding particular “Cases” and “Controversies.” U. S. Const., Art. III, §2. “Embedded in the traditional rules governing constitutional adjudication is the principle that a person to whom a statute may constitutionally be applied will not be heard to challenge that statute on the ground that it may conceivably be applied unconstitutionally to others, in other situations not before the Court.” Broadrick, 413 U. S., at 610. Yet the Court’s opinion in this case contains not a word explaining why Congress lacks the power to subject to preclearance the particular plaintiff that initiated this lawsuit—Shelby County, Alabama. The reason for the Court’s silence is apparent, for as applied to Shelby County, the VRA’s preclearance requirement is hardly contestable.
History has proved King right. Although circumstances in Alabama have changed, serious concerns remain. Between 1982 and 2005, Alabama had one of the highest rates of successful §2 suits, second only to its VRA-covered neighbor Mississippi. 679 F. 3d, at 897 (Williams, J., dissenting). In other words, even while subject to the restraining effect of §5, Alabama was found to have “deni[ed] or abridge[d]” voting rights “on account of race or color” more frequently than nearly all other States in the Union. 42 U. S. C. §1973(a). This fact prompted the dissenting judge below to concede that “a more narrowly tailored coverage formula” capturing Alabama and a handful of other jurisdictions with an established track record of racial discrimination in voting “might be defensible.” 679 F. 3d, at 897 (opinion of Williams, J.). That is an understatement. Alabama’s sorry history of §2 violations alone provides sufficient justification for Congress’ determination in 2006 that the State should remain subject to §5’s preclearance requirement. [ 7 ]
A few examples suffice to demonstrate that, at least in Alabama, the “current burdens” imposed by §5’s preclearance requirement are “justified by current needs.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 203. In the interim between the VRA’s 1982 and 2006 reauthorizations, this Court twice confronted purposeful racial discrimination in Alabama. In Pleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462 (1987) , the Court held that Pleasant Grove—a city in Jefferson County, Shelby County’s neighbor—engaged in purposeful discrimination by annexing all-white areas while rejecting the annexation request of an adjacent black neighborhood. The city had “shown unambiguous opposition to racial integration, both before and after the passage of the fed-eral civil rights laws,” and its strategic annexations appeared to be an attempt “to provide for the growth of a monolithic white voting block” for “the impermissible purpose of minimizing future black voting strength.” Id., at 465, 471–472.
Two years before Pleasant Grove, the Court in Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U. S. 222 (1985) , struck down a provision of the Alabama Constitution that prohibited individuals convicted of misdemeanor offenses “involving moral turpitude” from voting. Id., at 223 (internal quotation marks omitted). The provision violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the Court unanimously concluded, because “its original enactment was motivated by a desire to discriminate against blacks on account of race[,] and the [provision] continues to this day to have that effect.” Id., at 233.
These recent episodes forcefully demonstrate that §5’s preclearance requirement is constitutional as applied to Alabama and its political subdivisions. [ 8 ] And under our case law, that conclusion should suffice to resolve this case. See United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17 –25 (1960) (“[I]f the complaint here called for an application of the statute clearly constitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment, that should have been an end to the question of constitutionality.”). See also Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U. S. 721, 743 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (where, as here, a state or local government raises a facial challenge to a federal statute on the ground that it exceeds Congress’ enforcement powers under the Civil War Amendments, the challenge fails if the opposing party is able to show that the statute “could constitutionally be applied to some jurisdictions”).
This Court has consistently rejected constitutional challenges to legislation enacted pursuant to Congress’ enforcement powers under the Civil War Amendments upon finding that the legislation was constitutional as applied to the particular set of circumstances before the Court. See United States v. Georgia, 546 U. S. 151, 159 (2006) (Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) validly abrogates state sovereign immunity “insofar as [it] creates a private cause of action . . . for conduct that actually violates the Fourteenth Amendment”); Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U. S. 509 –534 (2004) (Title II of the ADA is constitutional “as it applies to the class of cases implicating the fundamental right of access to the courts”); Raines, 362 U. S., at 24–26 (federal statute proscribing deprivations of the right to vote based on race was constitutional as applied to the state officials before the Court, even if it could not constitutionally be applied to other parties). A similar approach is warranted here. [ 9 ]
Of gravest concern, Congress relied on our pathmarking Katzenbach decision in each reauthorization of the VRA. It had every reason to believe that the Act’s limited geographical scope would weigh in favor of, not against, the Act’s constitutionality. See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598 –627 (2000) (confining preclearance regime to States with a record of discrimination bolstered the VRA’s constitutionality). Congress could hardly have foreseen that the VRA’s limited geographic reach would render the Act constitutionally suspect. See Persily 195 (“[S]upporters of the Act sought to develop an evidentiary record for the principal purpose of explaining why the covered jurisdictions should remain covered, rather than justifying the coverage of certain jurisdictions but not others.”).
2 The Constitution uses the words “right to vote” in five separate places: the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and s. Each of these Amendments contains the same broad empowerment of Congress to enact “appropriate legislation” to enforce the protected right. The implication is unmistakable: Under our constitutional structure, Congress holds the lead rein in making the right to vote equally real for all U. S. citizens. These Amendments are in line with the special role assigned to Congress in protecting the integrity of the democratic process in federal elections. U. S. Const., Art. I, §4 (“[T]he Congress may at any time by Law make or alter” regulations concerning the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.”); Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc., ante, at 5–6.
Eric Holder, Jr. Attorney General