A victory for voting rights

A lustrous legacy of the civil rights movement has survived a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. By an 8-1 vote, the court has preserved a requirement that states and localities with a history of abridging the right to vote must get approval from the U.S. Justice Department before making changes to their election procedures, a practice known as “pre-clearance.” In refusing to strike down Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., has practiced the sort of judicial modesty that Roberts has preached but only occasionally practiced.

Critics of the Voting Rights Act had hoped that the court would use a case involving a Texas utility district to upend Section 5. The critics argued that the list of jurisdictions subject to pre-clearance was obsolete and intrusive to those states and municipalities -- mostly in the South -- that long ago dismantled barriers aimed at discouraging African Americans from voting. As one Georgia congressman complained, “If you move a polling place from the Baptist church to the Methodist church, you’ve got to go through the Justice Department.”

Lawyers for Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 argued further that Section 5 was obsolete given racial progress culminating in the election of Barack Obama. Congress took a longer-term view in 2006 when it extended Section 5 for an additional 25 years. And the Constitution gives Congress considerable leeway in enforcing the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.

Still, conservatives had hoped that the Roberts court would second-guess Congress. They were encouraged by questions from several justices at oral arguments in April. For example, Roberts asked a civil-rights lawyer supporting Section 5, “Is it your position today that Southerners are more likely to discriminate than Northerners?” Despite such ominous comments, both liberals and conservatives signed Roberts’ opinion.

One key to that accomplishment is that the decision included a big concession: The court accepted that the Texas utility district was eligible to “bail out” of pre-clearance by convincing a court that it hadn’t engaged in discrimination for the previous 10 years. Liberal justices were pleased that the decision stopped there. Conservatives found solace in Roberts’ observation that continued federal oversight of some states but not others raised “constitutional concerns.”

We would have preferred a decision unambiguously affirming the constitutionality of Section 5. Yet, given the present composition of the court, Monday’s outcome must be seen as a victory for the Voting Rights Act.