High court turns away challenge to voting act

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge Monday to a key provision of the historic Voting Rights Act in a closely watched case from Texas. The 8-1 decision leaves open the possibility of a future challenge to the 1965 landmark.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, noted that the case had attracted "ardent briefs from dozens" of parties. He said the court was, following usual practice, avoiding the large question because it could decide the case on narrow, statutory grounds. The justices made it easier for counties and other jurisdictions to win exemptions from U.S. scrutiny of their election laws.

Overall, lawyers on both sides praised the decision. Civil rights groups voiced satisfaction that the justices had not followed through on signals that they might strike down a provision that allows the U.S. Justice Department to review proposed election law changes in nine states, mostly in the South, and many other counties and municipalities, where bias has been most flagrant.

"I think it says something that the court was able to reach that level of harmony," John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said. He found the decision "surprising," given some of the complaints about the law during oral arguments in April.

A small utility district in Texas had challenged Congress' 2006 renewal of the law as exceeding congressional power to enforce rights. The utility district said the law infringed on states and was no longer necessary because of increases in minority registration and turnout.

During oral arguments, some justices, including Roberts, suggested they agreed that the law that aided once-disenfranchised blacks was no longer needed. When Roberts announced the ruling Monday, he struck some of that theme and intimated that a majority might someday invalidate the law. "Things have changed in the South," he said. Yet for now the act survives through a compromise among justices across the ideological spectrum.

A lower court had ruled that the Texas district did not qualify to seek an exemption, because it did not register its own voters, which Roberts said was too narrow a reading of the law.