[2][3] On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states.

[14] The Supreme Court upheld the preclearance requirement and coverage formula as constitutional enforcement legislation under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966).

[20] Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued the U.S. Attorney General in the U.S. District Court for D.C. in Washington, D.C., seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement.

[23] The Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear the case on the limited question of "whether Congress' decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution.

[26][27][28] A coalition of four states provided an amicus brief[29] to the Supreme Court expressing support for Section 5 and noting that the preclearance provision did not impose a burden on them.

It noted that since the coverage formula was last modified in 1975, the country "has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions".

"[32] According to the Court, "Regardless of how to look at the record no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the 'pervasive,' 'flagrant,' 'widespread,' and 'rampant' discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the nation.

President Barack Obama expressed deep disappointment with the decision and called on Congress "to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls".

[42][43] Attorney General Eric Holder also expressed disappointment, and pledged that the Department of Justice "will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling by hindering eligible citizens' full and free exercise of the franchise".

[46][47] When asked whether a polarized Congress could agree on a new coverage formula, Speaker John Boehner acknowledged the Voting Rights Act's importance over the previous 40 years and said he was reviewing the decision and trying to determine the next steps.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor expressed hope that Congress would "put politics aside" and determine how to ensure that voting rights remain protected.

The Court rightly decided that the statutory standard used decades ago to subject democratically elected state legislatures to second-guessing by unelected federal bureaucrats no longer survives constitutional scrutiny.

"[58] At the state level, Texas and Mississippi officials pledged within hours of the decision to enforce voter ID laws that the attorney general had precleared.

[61] Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, an Alexandria-based nonprofit legal defense foundation that provided counsel to Shelby County, commented that the Supreme Court restored "a fundamental constitutional order that America's laws must apply uniformly to each state and jurisdiction.

"[51] Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute said that the decision "restore[d] the constitutional order, the status quo ante the temporary Sections 4/5, because there is no longer systemic racial disenfranchisement, or at the very least in the covered jurisdictions".

[35] By contrast, Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that because of the decision, "[m]inority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades" and that their only recourse will be to pursue expensive litigation.

[62] Penda Hair, co-director of national racial justice organization Advancement Project, said, "The Supreme Court's ruling rolls back legislation that courageous Americans fought so hard for, even giving their lives in many cases, to ensure that all citizens can participate in our democracy.

Today's decision threatens the promise of equal access to the ballot—especially when the majority of voters of color who voted last year, 65.8 percent, live in states covered by the Section 4 formula.

"[63] Former White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig was highly critical of the decision, calling it not only "an assault on Congress" but also "the single greatest example of legislating from the bench in my lifetime".

He called for legislation protecting the right to vote in national and universal terms: "Such laws would be designed to eliminate unnecessary and unjustifiable barriers to political participation in general.

The commission chair said people "continue to suffer significant and profoundly unequal, limitations on their ability to vote ... That stark reality denigrates our democracy and diminishes our ideals.

Schuit and Rogowski note that this finding is contrary to the "majority's opinion in Shelby County v. Holder that 'things have changed' and that the issues addressed by the VRA are 'decades‐old problems'.

"[10] Journalist Vann R. Newkirk II asserted in July 2018 that in Shelby County v. Holder and the 2018 decisions Husted v. Randolph Institute[79][80] and Abbott v. Perez,[81] the Roberts Court has "set the stage for a new era of white hegemony", because these cases "furthered Roberts's mandate to distance the federal judiciary from Thurgood Marshall's vision of those bodies as active watchdogs for the Fourteenth and arbiters for America's racial injustices.

[85][86] A 2020 study found that the jurisdictions that had previously been covered by preclearance substantially increased the rate of voter registration purges after the Shelby decision.

After Shelby, Alabama Republicans drew a new legislative apportionment map of the state that some, such as federal judge Myron Herbert Thompson, contended was illegal.

[93][94] On October 10, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld an act of North Dakota[95] that requires voters to have an ID with their name, street address, and date of birth.

[103] Examples of problems under the new law involved public figures: Texas judge Sandra Watts was unable to vote because the name on her photo ID did not match the name on the voter rolls.

[106] On January 16, 2014, a bipartisan group of members of Congress, consisting of Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner and John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy, introduced H.R.3899/S.1945,[108] the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014.

[121] Since 2013, 19 states have implemented restrictive voter identification laws, closed polling places, and shortened early voting periods, according to U.S. Representative Terri Sewell.

Because of a single, misguided, 5 to 4 decision, the federal government can no longer effectively serve as a shield against disenfranchisement operations targeting minorities and the disadvantaged across the country.