The End of Preclearance as We Knew It: How the Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

This Article’s analysis reveals that by the 1990s the intent, or purpose, prong of Section 5 had become the dominant basis for objections to discriminatory voting changes. During that decade an astonishing 43 percent of all objections were, according to this assessment, based on discriminatory purpose alone. Thus, a key issue for Congress in determining how to deal with the preclearance requirement of the Act due to expire in 2007-assuming it seeks to restore the protection of minority voting rights that existed before January 2000-is whether to revise the language of Section 5 so as to restore the long-accepted definition of purpose thrown out by Bossier II. The authors believe that the analysis in the following pages provides critical evidence for the debate over reauthorization and revision of the Voting Rights Act.