June 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court avoided a sweeping ruling on a central part of the Voting Rights Act, striking a compromise that will let more jurisdictions change election procedures and district lines without federal approval.

The justices, voting 8-1, chose not to decide the constitutionality of a provision requiring that officials in eight states and parts of eight others get Justice Department clearance before making changes. The court instead said a small Texas utility district and other governmental bodies could seek an exemption. Justice Clarence Thomas issued a partial dissent.

The case had the potential to produce 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 under the provision, known as Section 5.

In part because of the Voting Rights Act, “we are now a very different nation,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”

The justices expanded Section 5’s so-called bailout procedure, which a lower court had said applies only to states, counties and a few other local government entities. Roberts said that all political subdivisions must be allowed to invoke the provision.

Obama Election

The ruling comes five months after Barack Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s first black president, an event neither Roberts nor Thomas mentioned.

The case tested 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. Both the Bush and Obama administrations defended the law.

Roberts described what he said were “serious constitutional questions” about the provision even as he pointed to the Voting Rights Act’s success in increasing minority voting and eliminating blatant examples of discrimination. He said those successes, by themselves, weren’t enough to justify the so-called preclearance requirement.

“The act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs,” he wrote.

Roberts suggested the 35-year-old formula for determining which states were covered was outdated. He also questioned whether Congress had enough evidence to treat states differently from one another.

Constitutional Question

Still, quoting from a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Roberts said the court “will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.”

He said the Constitution’s 15th Amendment “empowers ‘Congress,’ not the court, to determine in the first instance what legislation is needed to enforce it.” The 15th Amendment bars states from restricting voting on the basis of race.

Thomas faulted the court for not directly addressing the constitutionality of Section 5.

“The violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains,” Thomas said.

Texas Utility District

The provision was challenged by Texas’s Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1, which uses elections to select its board of directors. A lower court upheld the law.

Both sides declared victory. The court “ensured that this law will continue to protect free and fair access to the voting booth,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

“This case was brought to tear the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, and today that effort failed,” said Debo Adegbile, who argued at the court in support of the law for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

One of the utility district’s lawyers, Christian J. Ward, called the ruling a “total victory for our client.” He said the ruling “opens the door for the thousands of little jurisdictions like our district to seek a bailout.”

Others questioned whether more than a handful of jurisdictions would want to take on the political and legal obstacles to bailing out. Among other requirements, jurisdictions would have to show a 10-year record of compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

“Very few jurisdictions would attempt to do so,” predicted Nathaniel Persily, a political scientist and election- law professor at New York’s Columbia Law School.

Covered States

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.

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 has never been accused of voting-related discrimination.

The Supreme Court on four previous occasions upheld the preclearance requirement as a legitimate means of enforcing the 15th Amendment.

The case is Northwest Austin v. Mukasey, 08-322.

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

Last Updated: June 22, 2009 15:01 EDT