Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

The Northwest Austin Municipal District No. 1 indeed filed its appeal late yesterday at the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Based on recent decisions involving Section of the Fourteenth Amendment (which we will discuss next week), the District asserts that Congress's extension of Section 5 of the VRA in 2006 goes beyond Congress's powers to enact "appropriate legislation" to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. (The enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are essentially identical in language.) You can find coverage of yesterday's filing here.