Supreme Court Accepts Challenge To Voting Rights Act

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President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act in 1965

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case filed by ShelbyCounty, Alabama, challenging the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Shelby County is winless in two attempts to undo keysections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The county has asked the justices to hear its argument thatthe federal government no longer needs to closely monitor it and the rest ofthe South for signs of discrimination against minority voters. 
“We’ve been under it all these years and done the thingsthat have to be done,” Shelby County attorney Frank “Butch” Ellis said. “ShelbyCounty has painted itself in a different light already, and we would like forthe court and the world to have the chance to see that.”
Shelby County is a mostly white, conservative county southof Birmingham where a black candidate recently defeated a white incumbent towin a seat on the county board of education, and where some cities have blackmayors and council members, Ellis said.
Alabama is one of seven states backing the county’s case.
“The Shelby County case presents the question clearly. Itslawyers have worked hard to create the record the court needs,” said JohnNeiman, Alabama solicitor general.
“And the record shows why the re-enactment of this law wasunconstitutional. This law was necessary and appropriate during the civilrights 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 thelandmark law remains a vital tool to prevent discriminatory electionprocedures.
Since 1969, Alabama and its cities and counties have beencited dozens of times for proposing election changes that the JusticeDepartment said ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2008 inthe city of Calera in Shelby County.
“It strains credibility to be a state where Section 5 justbounced a discriminatory voting measure, yet on the other hand argue thatSection 5 is no longer needed,” said Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal Defenseand Education Fund, which represents black residents in Shelby County.