By Nina Totenberg | National Public Radio
The Court on Thursday narrowed the only remaining section of 1965 Voting Rights Act, rendering the landmark civil rights law close to a dead letter.
Arizona had banned so-called “ballot harvesting” as well as a policy that threw out an entire ballot if it was cast in the wrong precinct.
The 6-3 vote was along ideological lines. Justice Samuel Alito write the majority opinion for the court’s conservatives. Justice Elena Kagan and the court’s two other liberals dissented.
The “Court declines in these cases to announce a test to govern all VRA [Section 2] challenges to rules that specify the time, place, or manner for casting ballots,” Alito wrote. “It is sufficient for present purposes to identify certain guideposts that lead to the Court’s decision in these cases.”
The landmark law, widely hailed as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation in the nation’s history, was reauthorized five times after its original passage in 1965, but for all practical purposes, all that is left of it now is the section of the law banning vote dilution in redistricting, based on race.
