Per Drudge - FLASH: Section 4 of Voting Rights Act unconstitutional...

Drudge report ^

[Servant of the Cross]

Shelby County v Holder ....

Holder LOSES!

[House Atreides]

Well, well, well....one of Eric Holder’s (and of his thugs in the Department of “Justice”) toys just got taken away. A toy he used to oppress political jurisdictions with whom he had political disagreements regarding voting laws.

[Perdogg]

Without Section 4, Section 5 is almost meaningless if I understand it completely.

[Old Retired Army Guy]

Does this mean Alabama is “Free At Last”?

[~Vor~]

"If it was 5 to 4 then we can all guess the breakdown: Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg and Breyer against and Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Roberts for."

Absolutely!

[liberateUS]

Southern states, implement Voter ID immediately.

[Hotlanta Mike]

Another analysis...

Breaking: Supreme Court strikes down part of Voting Rights Act

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/25/breaking-supreme-court-strikes-down-part-of-voting-rights-act/

[BuckeyeTexan]

It would seem so. It will take the Congress a long time to pass a new coverage formula.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Thomas said in his concurrence that he would have struck down Section 5 also.

[pgkdan]

Finally!

[WildHighlander57]

Where can one find the “preclearance-affected” counties map for other states, such as Texas?

[2dogjoe]

Texas is free once again. Well, almost free.....

[AtlasStalled]

To borrow a phrase from the left: it’s time to move on from the ugly past.

[fwdude]

AND Texas JUST ROLLED-OVER and voted into law the (minority 'protecting') redistricting done by the Federal Courts for the 2012 elections.

Well, since the Demonicrats are all up in arms over this final map, maybe it's not such a bad thing.

[kabar]

Note too that Section 4 impacts Section 5. The latter governs redistricting, which is another state-level legislative process that the Department of Justice can block in certain states using Section 4′s preclearance authority. Without Section 4, Section 5 loses its teeth as a process with no jurisdiction any longer.

[SharpRightTurn]

“The decision effectively throws out section 5 unless Congress comes up with a new formula that applies to all the states.”

No doubt, Schumer will be bellowing that this must be fixed immediately or minorities will suffer irreparable harm.

And, no doubt, Boehner/Cantor and the usual suspects will gladly go along, just as Bush did in 2006 in reauthorizing this turkey.

[BuckeyeTexan]

So, yes, Section 5 is null and void until Congress passes a new coverage formula based on current data. From the opinion:

Because §5 applies only to those jurisdictions singled out by §4, the Court turns to consider that provision.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Likely to be an issue in 2016. “Make sure we elect Hillary to replace right wing justices....”

[kabar]

It would be interesting to find out how many Congressmen would vote to have their states that were previously exempt have the rules applied to them. It was OK when just the South was affected, but now will the entire country wish to live under the DOJ micromanaging their electoral process and preclear any changes?

I think not. I find it hard to believe Congress would pass such legislation affecting the whole country.

[wbill]

Southern states, implement Voter ID immediately.

We're working on it.

I'm a little concerned as to the ultimate outcome. The state that I'm in has been about a 50-50 split for BO over the last 2 elections. I see two possible outcomes of Voter ID....

1) What was once a fairly conservative state remains a 50-50 split. That's bad, IMHO.

2) Extensive Dem fraud gets cleaned up. Voter divide goes back to 55-45 (or more) approximately. That means that my vote - at least for the past few years, if not more, has been absolutely worthless. Again, a bad thing.

At least Voter ID will address the issues going forward.