Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Molitor, Abigail B.

Titel

Understanding Equal Sovereignty

Ist Teil von

• The University of Chicago law review, 2014-10, Vol.81 (4), p.1839-1882

Ort / Verlag

Chicago: The University of Chicago Law School

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

Nexis Uni (LexisNexis)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The Supreme Court recently invoked the principle of "equal sovereignty" in a decision striking down § 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which required federal preclearance of changes to voting laws in states and counties with a history of voting discrimination. In that case-'Shelby County v Holder'-an Alabama county sought a declaratory judgment that §§ 4(b) and of the VRA were facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement.[ Finding for Shelby County, the Court cited little case law supporting the principle on which it rested its decision: namely, that the federal government may not single out states for differential treatment. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that "a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute's disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets." The Court determined that § 4 of the VRA was insufficiently related to the current problem of voting discrimination and thus declared it unconstitutional.