His column begins:

The civil rights era ended Tuesday — or at least that’s what the historians will say about the U.S. Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as unconstitutional.

Congress enacted that law — one of the two crown jewels of the civil rights movement — because blacks were being denied access to the vote through unfair state-imposed tests in the still-segregated South. Passed a century after the Civil War ended, the law represented a sincere attempt by Congress to make the 15th Amendment’s right to vote actually meaningful.

By striking down that law as an outmoded infringement on states’ rights, the court has flipped the rules once and for all: The justices, and not the elected Congress, now decide what remedy is needed to effectuate the most basic right in a democracy. . . .

More here.