The court decided that the VRA was unfair because it singled out and punished the South (which obviously meant whites in the South), unfair because the 2006 reauthorization included the same states and counties as in the original bill, unfair because blacks had won multiple elections and were voting in record numbers, and unfair because the racism of the past, which had led to the creation of the VRA, obviously no longer determined access to the polls. The Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which determined which locales came under federal oversight.
