Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider overturning a central aspect of the Voting Rights Act, setting up a constitutional showdown over Congress’s power to protect the rights of minorities at the polling place.

The court will review the requirement that voting districts in eight states, along with parts of eight others, get Justice Department clearance before changing their district lines or election procedures. A small Texas utility district is challenging the clearance requirement, calling it an unwarranted intrusion on states’ rights.

A decision overturning preclearance, also known as Section 5, would mark the biggest change in U.S. voting law in decades. The Justice Department has challenged more than 2,400 state and local voting changes since 1982.

“Section 5 simply has no parallel as an intrusion by the federal government into the sovereignty reserved to the states in the constitutional structure,” the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 argued in its appeal.

With Barack Obama about to take office as the country’s first black president, the nation’s highest court today added two race cases to its calendar. The justices also will review a decision by New Haven, Connecticut, to cancel planned promotions in its fire department because no blacks had scored well enough on two tests to qualify for the 17 new positions.

Civil Rights Law

A lower court said the cancellations were justified because the city was concerned it might violate a U.S. civil rights law by excluding blacks. The city was sued by 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic who lost their chance at promotions.

The justices also agreed to consider whether Iraq must face suits alleging human rights abuses by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The voting-rights case will test a 1965 law that in 2006 was extended for 25 years by a Republican-controlled Congress looking to appeal to minority voters. President George W. Bush signed the measure into law, and his administration is now joining civil rights groups in urging the high court to uphold Section 5.

“Congress found that covered jurisdictions continue to adopt, employ and perpetuate techniques to suppress and dilute the vote of minority citizens,” Bush’s lawyers argued in court papers.

That argument is one that the Obama administration will now inherit. The high court probably will hear arguments in April and rule by the end of June.

Previous Rulings

The Supreme Court has on four occasions upheld the preclearance requirement as a legitimate means of enforcing the Constitution’s 15th Amendment, which bars states from restricting voting on the basis of race.

Northwest Austin says those decisions are now outdated and that Congress in 2006 lacked enough evidence of racial discrimination to justify the preclearance requirement. The appeal also faults Congress for relying on a decades-old formula to determine which states are covered by Section 5.

That formula “bears no more meaningful relationship to the problem of voting discrimination as it existed in 2006 than if Congress had decided covered jurisdictions by playing pin-the- tail-on-the-donkey,” the utility district argued. Northwest Austin’s lead lawyer, Gregory Coleman, is a former law clerk to conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

Bush administration lawyers countered that “Congress chose to cover particular jurisdictions based on their extensive records of discriminating against minority voters” and that “even today, there is more voting discrimination in covered jurisdictions.”

Mainly in South

The states covered in their entirety by preclearance are mostly in the South: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. Parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia are also covered.

One issue for the justices will be the level of deference they should accord to lawmakers. In 1966, the justices said Congress “may use any rational means” to advance the goals of the 15th Amendment. Northwest Austin is urging the court to apply a less deferential standard that they have used in other contexts.

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has voiced concern about the Voting Rights Act and governmental considerations of race. In a 2006 case involving the Voting Rights Act, Roberts wrote: “It is a sordid business, this divvying up by race.”

Minority Influence

The justices in their current term already are scrutinizing a separate provision in the Voting Rights Act that protects against the dilution of minority influence at the polls. The question is whether that provision applies when minorities can elect their preferred candidate only with help from whites.

Northwest Austin, established on previously undeveloped land in the 1980s, is a municipal utility district that serves 3,500 Travis County residents and conducts elections to select its board of directors. The district says it has never been accused of voting-related discrimination.

The district filed suit days after Congress reauthorized the law. Under the procedures that govern the Voting Rights Act, the suit went before a three-judge panel, which unanimously upheld the preclearance requirement in May.

The judges also said Northwest Austin couldn’t invoke a Voting Rights Act provision that lets covered jurisdictions go to court to seek an exemption from Section 5. The panel said that so-called bailout provision applies only to states, counties and a few other local government entities.

The Voting Rights Act case is Northwest Austin v. Mukasey, 08-322. The racial bias cases are Ricci v. DeStefano, 07-1428, and Ricci v. DeStefano, 08-328.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 9, 2009 14:51 EST