Facts
- South Carolina filed an original action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the U.S. Attorney General to block enforcement of major provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- The challenged Act targeted jurisdictions with documented patterns of racial discrimination in voting and created time-limited, targeted federal controls.
- The Act’s coverage formula identified jurisdictions using specified “tests or devices” and with low voter registration or turnout in the 1964 presidential election.
- In covered jurisdictions, the Act suspended the use of such tests or devices as prerequisites to voting.
- The Act required covered jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before implementing new voting rules, either by no objection from the Attorney General within a set period or by a declaratory judgment from a three-judge federal court in the District of Columbia.
- The Act authorized federal examiners to assist in voter qualification and registration in covered jurisdictions under specified triggering conditions.
- South Carolina argued these mechanisms exceeded Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power and violated state sovereignty, equal state treatment, separation of powers, due process, and the prohibition on bills of attainder.
Issues
- Whether the Voting Rights Act’s coverage formula, suspension of tests or devices, preclearance requirement, and federal examiner provisions were valid enforcement legislation under § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment.
- Whether those provisions unconstitutionally infringed state authority over elections, violated equal treatment of states, or otherwise contravened constitutional structural limits, due process, or the bill of attainder prohibition.
Decision
- The Court upheld the challenged provisions in an 8–1 decision.
- Congress may use “appropriate” and rational means to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on racial discrimination in voting.
- The coverage formula was upheld as evidence-based and directed at jurisdictions where discrimination had been most severe and persistent.
- The temporary suspension of tests or devices in covered areas was upheld as a permissible response to their discriminatory use.
- Preclearance was upheld as a prospective mechanism to prevent evasion and recurring discrimination through new voting changes.
- The federal examiner provisions were upheld as a permissible enforcement tool tied to statutory criteria and subject to oversight.
- Claims based on equal state treatment, state sovereignty, due process, separation of powers, and bill of attainder theories were rejected; the complaint was dismissed and injunctive relief denied.
Legal Principles
- Under § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress may enact strong remedial and preventive measures to stop racial discrimination in voting when supported by a substantial record of persistent violations.
- Congress may target remedies to particular jurisdictions when the selection criteria are rationally connected to demonstrated discrimination; uniform nationwide application is not required.
- Literacy tests and similar devices are not inherently unconstitutional, but Congress may suspend their use in jurisdictions where they function as tools of racial exclusion.
- Preclearance requirements can be constitutional as forward-looking controls designed to prevent discriminatory election changes before they take effect in jurisdictions with a history of evasion.
- A state may not invoke the Fifth Amendment as if it were a private “person” to challenge federal enforcement legislation; regulatory voting-rights measures directed at constitutional compliance are not a bill of attainder.
Conclusion
The Court sustained the Voting Rights Act’s principal enforcement mechanisms as appropriate Fifteenth Amendment legislation, holding that Congress could impose targeted, prospective constraints—such as suspension of discriminatory tests, preclearance of voting changes, and federal examiners—to remedy and prevent entrenched racial discrimination in voting.