Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder
174 L. Ed. 2d 140, 129 S. Ct. 2504 (2009)
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Rule of Law:
Any political subdivision within a state covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is eligible to seek bailout from the Act's preclearance requirements, regardless of whether it registers its own voters. The narrow statutory definition of 'political subdivision' in Section 14(c)(2) of the Act does not limit the availability of the bailout mechanism in Section 4(a).
Facts:
- Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One is a small utility district in Travis County, Texas, created in 1987.
- The district is governed by an elected five-member board and is responsible for its own elections.
- The district does not conduct its own voter registration; Travis County handles the administration of its elections.
- Because it is located in Texas, a jurisdiction covered by the Voting Rights Act, the district is subject to the preclearance requirements of Section 5.
- There has never been any evidence of the district engaging in racial discrimination in voting.
Procedural Posture:
- Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One sued the U.S. Attorney General in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a court of first instance.
- The district sought a declaratory judgment that it was eligible for bailout from Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, or alternatively, that Section 5 was unconstitutional as applied to it.
- A three-judge panel of the District Court denied the district's claims.
- The District Court held that the district was not a 'political subdivision' as defined by the Act and was therefore ineligible for bailout.
- The District Court also ruled that the 2006 reauthorization of Section 5 was a constitutional exercise of congressional power.
- The district (appellant) filed a direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Issue:
Is a political subdivision, such as a utility district, that is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirements but does not register its own voters, eligible to seek to 'bail out' from those requirements under Section 4(a) of the Act?
Opinions:
Majority - Chief Justice Roberts
Yes. Any political subdivision subject to the preclearance burdens of Section 5 is also eligible to seek relief through the Section 4(a) bailout provision. The Court invoked the doctrine of constitutional avoidance, declining to rule on the constitutionality of Section 5 because a statutory ground was available to resolve the case. The Court found that its precedent in United States v. Sheffield Bd. of Comm’rs established that the narrow definition of 'political subdivision' in Section 14(c)(2) does not apply to Section 5's coverage, and therefore there should be symmetry for its bailout provision. Furthermore, the 1982 amendments to the Act, which explicitly allowed for 'piecemeal' bailout by subdivisions within a covered state, repudiated the earlier logic of City of Rome and demonstrated Congress's intent to make bailout broadly available to all covered entities.
Concurring-in-part-and-dissenting-in-part - Justice Thomas
Yes, on the statutory question, but the Court should have decided the constitutional issue. Justice Thomas argued that the principle of constitutional avoidance was improperly applied because the Court's ruling did not grant the district full relief (bailout itself), but only eligibility to seek it, meaning the constitutional issue was not truly avoided. He would have held that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional because the 'exceptional conditions' of racial discrimination in voting that justified its enactment in 1965 no longer exist. He argued that current data on voter registration and turnout show that the 'current burdens' of Section 5 are not justified by 'current needs,' rendering the law an unconstitutional exercise of Congress's Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power.
Analysis:
This decision is significant primarily for its application of constitutional avoidance and its strong signaling of the Court's growing skepticism about the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. By highlighting the 'serious constitutional questions' surrounding the Act's preclearance requirements and its reliance on decades-old data, the Court sent a clear warning to Congress. This opinion effectively set the stage for the landmark 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder, where the Court invalidated the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act, thus neutralizing the preclearance requirement.
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