South Carolina v. Katzenbach

Despite the Fifteenth Amendment, state and local officials had effectively denied African Americans the right to vote by imposing literacy requirements and other tests that impeded African Americans from registering to vote. For example, at the time of the 1964 presidential election, there were almost three million African American adults who were not registered to vote in the eleven southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. This led civil rights leaders, President Lyndon Johnson, and members of both political parties in Congress to call for sweeping legislation to ensure that African Americans would have equal opportunities to participate in elections. In August 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Johnson.

Although the act contained numerous provisions, three sections were principally designed to ensure that state and local governments could not erect barriers to registration of, and voting by, African Americans. These sections applied to any state or county where less than 50 percent of African Americans are registered to vote and where literacy or other educational tests are required for registration. Section 4 suspended all such tests. Section 5 required any state or county seeking to impose a new test or registration requirement to obtain the approval of the attorney general of the United States, or of the U.S. District Court. Section 6 of the Voting Rights Act allowed the attorney general to send federal examiners into the states and counties to register voters outside of the state or local system.