Supreme Court Accepts Challenge To Voting Rights Act

President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act in 1965

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case filed by Shelby County, Alabama, challenging the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Shelby County is winless in two attempts to undo key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The county has asked the justices to hear its argument that the federal government no longer needs to closely monitor it and the rest of the South for signs of discrimination against minority voters. 

“We’ve been under it all these years and done the things that have to be done,” Shelby County attorney Frank “Butch” Ellis said. “Shelby County has painted itself in a different light already, and we would like for the court and the world to have the chance to see that.”

Shelby County is a mostly white, conservative county south of Birmingham where a black candidate recently defeated a white incumbent to win a seat on the county board of education, and where some cities have black mayors and council members, Ellis said.

Alabama is one of seven states backing the county’s case.

“The Shelby County case presents the question clearly. Its lawyers have worked hard to create the record the court needs,” said John Neiman, Alabama solicitor general.

“And the record shows why the re-enactment of this law was unconstitutional. This law was necessary and appropriate during the civil rights era, but it is not necessary and appropriate today.”

On the other side of the case, the Justice Department — joined by civil rights groups and some black residents of the county — says the landmark law remains a vital tool to prevent discriminatory election procedures.

Since 1969, Alabama and its cities and counties have been cited dozens of times for proposing election changes that the Justice Department said ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2008 in the city of Calera in Shelby County.

“It strains credibility to be a state where Section 5 just bounced a discriminatory voting measure, yet on the other hand argue that Section 5 is no longer needed,” said Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represents black residents in Shelby County.