Voting Rights Act section affects provision on states

• Chief Justice Roberts paid tribute to the fight that marked 1950s and %2760s
• The law outlawed practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests
• Section 5 is viewed by many as a savior of black and Latino voting rights

WASHINGTON — The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson — with Martin Luther King Jr. standing near — in the wake of the violence and bloodshed that marked the 1950s and 1960s in the South.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paid tribute to those dark days Tuesday even while striking down a key section of the law. He referred to the killing of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during "Freedom Summer" in 1964, as well as Selma, Ala.'s "Bloody Sunday" a year later.

The law barred the types of practices that were common in many states, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and set up legal and regulatory processes to overturn them. Its steel spine was Section 5, which required certain states and municipalities to get federal permission before making changes in voting practices. Section 4, invalidated by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, laid out which states would be subject to that requirement.

Under a formula that was based on the existence of literacy tests as well as minority registration and voter turnout statistics, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia emerged with what they later considered a scarlet letter. Texas, Arizona and Alaska were added in 1975. The law was reauthorized in 1982 and 2006 with only minor changes, each time for 25 additional years.

Debo Adegbile, a civil rights lawyer who helped defend the law before the court in February, calls it "perhaps the mothership of congressional civil rights statutes." New York University law professor Kenji Yoshino calls it "the crown jewel of the civil rights movement."

Section 5 is viewed by many as a savior of black and Latino voting rights. When Congress last voted to extend it until 2031 — by overwhelming votes of 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate — it cited about 2,400 proposed voting changes blocked during the previous quarter-century.