Adam Liptak

Voting tests were abolished, disparities in voting registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African Americans attained political office in record numbers.

And that account of history suggests to him that this law has done its job, but the job having been done, we no longer need it.

Famously, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013, responding to this same kind of argument, said,

That may be so, but you don't throw away your umbrella just because you're not getting wet.

And her suggestion was that it was because the Voting Rights Act was still in place that these gains could be sustained.

Well, Justice Alito says that they're not abandoning their precedents in this area.

that we need only update the framework so that it reflects important historical developments.

Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, on behalf of herself and the two other Democratic appointees, Justices Sotomayor and Jackson,

has a completely different view.

She wrote that the Voting Rights Act was, quote, "...born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers.

It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.

And it has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly..."

reauthorized by the people's representatives in Congress.

Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed, not the members of this court.

I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majorities now completed

So you have these two competing viewpoints.

Maybe each of them is overstating things to a point.

But as between the two of them, I would think that Justice Kagan has the better of the argument.

Because?

The history in this area is these three decisions now.