In a major blow to civil rights activists, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down an important part of a 48-year-old Voting Rights Act, designed to protect minority voters.



NAACP National Field Director Rev. Charles White speaks to reporters at the Supreme Court's building on June 25, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst







The court ruled on a 5-4 vote in favor of officials from Shelby County, Alabama, in finding that a section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that sets the formula that determines which states need federal approval to change voting laws is invalid:



"Congress did not use the record it compiled to shape a coverage formula grounded in current conditions," he wrote. "It instead re-enacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day. " Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, stating that the coverage formula that Congress used when it most recently reauthorized the law in 2006 should have been updated.





Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, pledged to move quickly to try to restore voting rights protections after the ruling:







"I intend to take immediate action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting," Senator Patrick Leahy







The court did not strike down Section 5, which requires certain states, mainly in the South, to show that any proposed election-law change does not discriminate against black, Latino or other minority voters. Those states were required to get approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before making election-law changes. The nine fully covered states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.





But the decision struck down Section 4b, which defines the formula for states covered by Section 5 and was based on historic patterns of discrimination against minority voters.

Congress will need to pass new legislation before Section 5 can be applied again.