South Carolina v. Katzenbach: Ruling, Dissent, and Aftermath

South Carolina v. Katzenbach is the 1966 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by an 8-1 vote, giving Congress broad authority under the Fifteenth Amendment to override state election laws and impose direct federal oversight on jurisdictions with long histories of racial discrimination in voting. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority opinion; Justice Hugo Black dissented in part. The case set the constitutional foundation for federal voting rights enforcement for nearly fifty years, until the Court narrowed it in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013.

How the Case Reached the Court

By the mid-1960s, roughly a century of Fifteenth Amendment litigation had failed to end racial discrimination in voting. States used literacy tests, “good moral character” requirements, voucher systems, and similar screens to keep Black citizens off the rolls. When one barrier fell in court, officials replaced it with another. Congress responded with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended discriminatory tests outright and required covered states to obtain federal approval before changing their voting rules.¹

South Carolina sued Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach almost immediately, invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction under Article III, Section 2, which lets the Court hear disputes between a state and the federal government. Five other states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia, filed briefs supporting the challenge.²

What the Voting Rights Act Did to Covered States

Two provisions drove the fight. Section 4(b) contained the coverage formula. It targeted any state or political subdivision that, as of November 1, 1964, both maintained a test or device as a prerequisite for voting and had fewer than 50 percent of voting-age residents either registered or actually voting in the November 1964 presidential election. When the Act took effect on August 7, 1965, that formula pulled in Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, twenty-six counties in North Carolina, and one county in Arizona.³ Covered jurisdictions faced a five-year suspension of literacy tests and similar devices, and federal examiners could be sent in to register qualified voters directly.¹

Section 5 went further. It froze election laws in covered jurisdictions. No change to voting rules, no matter how minor, could take effect until the jurisdiction proved to either the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the change had neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect. This was known as preclearance, and it was the provision that most angered the plaintiff states.⁴

South Carolina’s Arguments

South Carolina raised three main constitutional objections. The first invoked equal sovereignty. Covered states had to seek federal permission before altering local election laws; uncovered states did not. South Carolina called that treatment fundamentally unequal among members of the Union.

The second attacked preclearance as an unconstitutional prior restraint on legislative power. Normally, a state enacts a law and the law takes effect; anyone who objects sues afterward. Section 5 reversed the sequence, forcing states to prove a law was lawful before it could operate at all. South Carolina argued the Tenth Amendment reserved the power to set voter qualifications to the states, and that Section 5 intruded on that reserved power in a way no federal statute had before.²

The third targeted the coverage formula itself. Using registration and turnout data from a single election cycle to trigger years of federal oversight, the state argued, punished jurisdictions for past behavior without a sufficient tie to ongoing conditions.

The Court’s Ruling

Chief Justice Warren delivered the majority opinion on March 7, 1966. The Court dismissed South Carolina’s bill of complaint and refused to enjoin the Attorney General from enforcing the Act, leaving every challenged provision in place.²

On equal sovereignty, Warren acknowledged the doctrine but limited its scope. It applies to the terms on which states enter the Union, not to remedies Congress crafts for problems that emerge later. The Fifteenth Amendment specifically empowers Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting, and that power can be directed at the places where the problem is worst without violating the Constitution.²

The coverage formula was rational, the Court found, because tests and devices had a long history as tools of voter suppression and depressed registration and turnout were obvious symptoms of that suppression. Combining the two data points was a reasonable way to identify the jurisdictions where discrimination ran deepest.³

Congressional Power Under the Fifteenth Amendment

The legal foundation was Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”⁵ Warren read “appropriate” broadly, invoking Chief Justice John Marshall’s formulation in McCulloch v. Maryland from 1819: if the end is legitimate and within the scope of the Constitution, then any means plainly adapted to that end, provided it is not otherwise prohibited, is constitutional.³

Case-by-case litigation had failed, the Court found. Lawsuits were slow, expensive, and easily circumvented. The congressional record documented “unremitting and ingenious defiance” of the Fifteenth Amendment in parts of the country.² Given that record, Congress did not have to wait for violations to happen one at a time and litigate them one at a time. It could act preventively, and it could act aggressively.

Justice Black’s Partial Dissent

Justice Hugo Black cast the lone partial vote against the majority. He agreed most of the Act was constitutional, including the suspension of literacy tests and the coverage formula. His disagreement targeted Section 5.³

Black objected on two grounds. He argued that requiring a state to submit a proposed law to a federal court before it takes effect was functionally the same as asking for an advisory opinion, which the Constitution forbids federal courts from issuing. More forcefully, he warned that requiring states to travel to Washington and plead for permission to govern themselves reduced them to something resembling “conquered provinces,” comparing the arrangement to the colonial-era grievance against the English crown for holding legislative proceedings in distant and inconvenient places.³

His concern was structural. He accepted that Congress could ban discriminatory voting practices outright. What troubled him was giving the Attorney General or a single federal court veto power over state legislation before it became operative.

What Katzenbach Changed

The Fifteenth Amendment, once enforced almost entirely through lawsuits filed after the fact, now supported a federal regulatory structure that could stop discriminatory laws before they ever took effect. States in covered jurisdictions could no longer invoke reserved powers as a shield against federal voting rights enforcement. The framework held for nearly five decades.

How Shelby County v. Holder Narrowed the Ruling

In 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder by a 5-4 vote, striking down Section 4(b)’s coverage formula as unconstitutional.⁶

The Shelby County majority did not overrule Katzenbach. It drew a distinction. The formula was rational in 1966 because it reflected conditions that actually existed then. By 2013, literacy tests had been banned nationwide for over forty years, and voter registration and turnout in covered states had risen sharply. Yet the formula still relied on data from elections in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Court concluded Congress had reenacted “a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”⁶

The practical effect was immediate. Section 5 itself was not struck down and remains in the statute, but without a valid coverage formula, no jurisdiction is subject to preclearance under it.⁴ The only exception involves jurisdictions placed under preclearance by a separate court order under Section 3(c). Congress has not enacted a replacement formula.⁷

What Federal Voting Protection Looks Like Now

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act remains fully in force. Unlike the geographically targeted provisions at issue in Katzenbach, Section 2 is permanent and nationwide. It prohibits any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial of the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Following 1982 amendments, a plaintiff does not need to prove discriminatory intent; showing that a challenged practice denies minority voters an equal opportunity to participate, considering the totality of local circumstances, is enough.⁸

The enforcement burden, however, has shifted back to where it sat before 1965. Under the preclearance regime upheld in Katzenbach, covered states had to prove their laws were clean before enacting them. Under Section 2, voters and the federal government must file suit after a potentially discriminatory law has already taken effect, the same slow, after-the-fact litigation model that Congress found inadequate in 1965.

1
National Archives. Voting Rights Act (1965)
2
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. South Carolina v Katzenbach, 383 US 301 (1966)
3
Library of Congress. South Carolina v Katzenbach, 383 US 301 (1966)
4
U.S. Department of Justice. About Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act
5
Library of Congress. US Constitution – Fifteenth Amendment
6
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Shelby County v Holder, 570 US 529 (2013)
7
Congress.gov. HR 14 – John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2025
8
Department of Justice. Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act