Saving Section 5: Reflections on Georgia V. Ashcroft, and Its Impact on the Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (hereinafter, “Ashcroft”), interpreting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as it related to the 2001 Georgia redistricting, and in so doing, changed the face of the Voting Rights Act. Prior to Ashcroft, redistrictings in jurisdictions subject to Section 5 were analyzed according to the standard enunciated in Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 (1976), which held that Section 5 prohibits “retrogression,” or the reduction in minority voters’ ability to exercise their franchise effectively. For almost three decades, until the Ashcroft decision, the effective exercise of the franchise was defined by minority voters’ ability to elect candidates of their own choice. Thus, by freezing in place gains that minority voters had made in electing their candidates of choice, Section 5 helped contrib-