Link - an excerpt from an SCOTUSblog online VRA symposium:
There is no question that in 1965, when there was widespread,
systematic, state-sponsored discrimination against black voters in
states like Alabama and Mississippi, that the Supreme Court could
justify an abrogation of “our historic tradition that all the states
enjoy ‘equal sovereignty’” and subject states engaging in such illicit
behavior to special rules. As the Court said in NAMUDNO, “the
problems Congress faced when it passed the Act were so dire that
‘exceptional conditions [could] justify legislative measures not
otherwise appropriate.’”
But the conditions that existed in 1965 have almost entirely
disappeared. No one can rationally claim that there is still
widespread, systematic discrimination in the voting context in the
covered states or that those “exceptional conditions” still exist. As
the Court recognized in NAMUDNO, “Things have changed in the
South.” The turnout of voters “and registration rates now approach
parity…discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And
minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” As Justice
Thomas said in his dissent, “[t]he extensive pattern of discrimination
that led the Court to previously uphold § 5 as enforcing the Fifteenth
Amendment no longer exists.” Not only has the disparity in black and
white registration and turnout “nearly vanished,” in some states like
Mississippi “black voter registration actually exceeded white voter
registration.”
The actions of Congress in 2006 and the enforcement history of the
Justice Department have only worsened the grave constitutional flaws of
Section 5.
