Today, the Supreme Court threw out the famous 1965 Voting Rights Act that has been hailed as a landmark civil rights piece of legislation. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that one particular provision was unconstitutional: Section 4. This section of the Voting Rights Act established a “formula” to determine which states required oversight from the federal government and so needed to request permission prior to instituting any changes in voter registration laws, voting laws, or redistricting efforts. My understanding is that the Supreme Court found that this formula was outdated and irrelevant, as it was based on information and data gathered in the 1960s and had never been updated. Without this provision, the rest of the Voting Rights Act becomes harder to enforce, since much of it is connected to Section 4.

The response from the left and right has been fairly predictable, with those on the left lamenting the activist efforts of the Supreme Court to those on the right hailing the Solomonic wisdom of these same justices. As someone not versed in matters of law, the ruling seems mixed. On the one hand, it is hardly deniable that the country has evolved, and so it makes sense that a formula should be updated. it is an indictment of Congress that it had not made any efforts to seriously research these issues over the years in an effort to establish an updated formula. And yet, the assumption that the U.S. has evolved beyond the need for legislative protection of the voting rights of minority citizens ignores the volumes of sociological, public opinion, and psychological research documenting experiences of racism and discrimination that continue to affect so many citizens.

And so we now move to a wait-and-see mode. Will Congress respond by updating the formula? This would require bipartisan cooperation on a scale we have not seen since 2001. My guess is no, and so we may be in for a slew of lawsuits from both sides that attempt to continue to resolve this issue in the courts.