A witness at a House Republican hearing Thursday on the Voting Rights Act said the legislation remains “a powerful statute,” defending the Supreme Court ruling last month that overturned a key provision of the legislation and arguing that the “the systematic, widespread discrimination against blacks has long since disappeared.”
The Supreme Court last month invalidated a longstanding provision of the VRA that determined which parts of the country were required to have changes to their voting and election laws pre-cleared by the Justice Department.
“[That section] was an unprecedented, extraordinary intrusion into state sovereignty,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “No other federal law presumes that states cannot govern themselves as their legislatures decide and must have the federal government’s consent before they act.”
