Shelby County v. Holder
The Supreme Court struck down the formula Congress used to decide which states and localities had to get federal permission before changing their voting laws, ruling that the formula relied on decades-old data with no connection to current conditions.
The decision effectively halted the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement nationwide, because without a valid formula identifying which places were covered, that requirement could not be enforced anywhere until Congress writes a new one.
“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
The Court's closing explanation for why the outdated coverage formula could not stand.
How it got here: A federal district court in Washington upheld the law; the D.C. Circuit affirmed; Shelby County asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 required certain states and counties with histories of racial discrimination in voting — mostly in the South — to get federal approval, called preclearance, before changing voting laws. Shelby County, Alabama, one of the covered jurisdictions, sued the U.S. Attorney General, arguing that the formula used to decide which places were covered, and the preclearance requirement itself, were unconstitutional because conditions had changed dramatically since the 1960s and 1970s.
The question before the Court
Could Congress keep requiring certain states and counties to get federal approval before changing their voting laws, using a formula for picking those places that was based on 1960s and 1970s data?
Why it matters
States and counties that once needed federal sign-off before changing voting rules — including polling place locations, district lines, and voter ID requirements — could immediately implement changes without that oversight. Civil rights groups lost a powerful tool for catching discriminatory voting changes before they took effect, shifting the burden to after-the-fact lawsuits.
What changes now
The ruling struck down only the coverage formula, not the preclearance requirement itself, but without a formula there was no way to determine which jurisdictions preclearance applied to, so the requirement became unenforceable unless Congress passes a new formula based on current data. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans discriminatory voting practices nationwide and allows lawsuits after the fact, remains fully in effect.
What this does not decide
The Court explicitly said it was not ruling on whether the preclearance requirement in Section 5 itself is constitutional, only on the coverage formula in Section 4 that determined which jurisdictions Section 5 applied to. It also left untouched the nationwide, permanent ban on racial discrimination in voting found in Section 2.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas joined the majority in full but argued the Court should have gone further and declared Section 5's preclearance requirement itself unconstitutional, not just the coverage formula. He argued the majority's own reasoning about outdated conditions and lack of current justification logically compelled that conclusion, and that the Court was merely delaying an inevitable result.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”Ginsburg's central objection that progress resulted from, not despite, the preclearance requirement.
Justice Ginsburg argued Congress had compiled an extensive record showing continuing discrimination in covered jurisdictions, including newer 'second-generation' barriers like racial gerrymandering and at-large voting schemes, and that courts owe substantial deference to Congress's judgment enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment. She would have upheld the formula, comparing striking it down to 'throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet' since preclearance was working.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied a principle from its earlier decision in Northwest Austin: that any law imposing extraordinary burdens on some states but not others must be justified by current conditions, not just conditions from the past, out of respect for the equal standing of all states.
- The Court found that the coverage formula was based entirely on data from the 1960s and early 1970s — old voter registration numbers and now-banned literacy tests — and had not been updated even though Congress renewed the preclearance requirement for another 25 years in 2006.
- The Court rejected the government's argument that the formula could be justified simply because it was 'reverse-engineered' to match the places Congress wanted to cover, holding that a formula must actually relate to present-day conditions to justify treating some states differently from others.
- The Court also rejected the argument that the formula remained valid so long as any discrimination persisted in the originally covered states, reasoning that the Fifteenth Amendment looks to the present and future, not to punishing the past.
- Because current voter registration and turnout data showed that the racial gaps the formula was designed to capture had largely disappeared in the covered jurisdictions, the Court concluded the formula no longer bore a rational relationship to which places needed federal oversight, making it unconstitutional.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits South Carolina v. Katzenbach (383 U. S. 301)
The Court relied on Katzenbach's approval of the formula in 1966 but held that same formula no longer fits today's conditions.
Reaffirms Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder (557 U. S. 193)
The Court built directly on this 2009 decision's warnings that the coverage formula raised serious constitutional doubts.