The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can no longer be judged by voting discrimination that went on decades ago, in a decision that marks the end of a major civil-rights era reform.

The 5-4 ruling rewrites a key tool of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which for five decades has given the federal government unprecedented say in everything from how some states draw their congressional maps to where they place polling locations.

SEE RELATED: Supreme Court sends affirmative action case back to lo...

But the justices said after five decades, the law has had a dramatic effect in ending discrimination in voting, and said Congress must now come up with new ways of deciding who still needs federal oversight.

Beneath the legal ruling is a broader social statement, with the justices saying that a state cannot be perpetually held responsible for past discrimination if there’s no evidence that it still exists.

“Congress —if it is to divide the states — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot rely simply on the past,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

The ruling leaves in place many of the protections of the 1965 law, such as banning literacy tests. But it said the federal government can no longer treat some jurisdictions differently because of discrimination that may have ended decades ago.

“If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present cover- age formula. It would have been irrational for Congress to distinguish between states in such a fundamental way based on 40-year-old data, when today’s statistics tell an entirely different story,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

At issue was Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies a decades-old formula to decide which states and counties had histories of discrimination.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/25/court-past-voting-d...