From the NYT:
The Supreme Court on Monday left intact one of the signature legacies of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The court, in an 8-to-1 decision, ducked the central question in a case that was the most closely watched of the term. Most election law specialists had expected the court to rule on whether a core provision of the law was constitutional, and many were betting the answer would be no.
The court instead ruled on a narrow statutory ground, saying the utility district in Austin, Tex., that had challenged the constitutionality of the law — along with other government entities around the nation — might be eligible to “bail out” from being covered by it. The district, which manages water and other utilities and has an elected board, had pressed the bailout argument along with its constitutional challenge, and its lawyer said at the argument in the case that it would be satisfied with a ruling in its favor on the narrower ground.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, acknowledged that the court’s approach stretched the statutory text, but he said the court should avoid deciding hard constitutional questions when it could.
“We are now a very different nation” than the one that first passed the Voting Rights Act, the chief justice said. “Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”
It is not unusual for the court to defer or avoid constitutional questions in cases that can be decided on narrower grounds. But almost all of the signs in this case, including Chief Justice Roberts’s own skeptical questioning at the argument, suggested that the court was steeling itself to make a major pronouncement about the role of race in American democracy. In opting to put off such a ruling, the justices nonetheless made a powerful statement. They took a hard look at the current historical moment and decided that it has not yet come fully into focus.
Scotusblog thinks the language of the decision suggests that it may yet overturn it at some point in the future.
- Wikipedia: Voting Rights Act.
