June 25, 2013

SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN CORE OF VOTING RIGHTS ACT






The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.
“In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.”

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and gave very different accounts of whether racial minorities continue to face discrimination in voting.
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The decision will have immediate practical consequences. Changes in voting procedures that had required advance federal approval, including voter identification laws and restrictions on early voting, will now be subject only to after-the-fact litigation.
“With today’s decision,” said Greg Abbott, Texas’ attorney general, “the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. [They did.] Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was one of the towering legislative achievements of the civil rights movement, and Chief Justice Roberts said its "strong medicine" was the right response to "entrenched racial discrimination." At the time it was first enacted, he said, black voter turnout in the South stood at 6.4 percent in Mississippi.
In the most recent election, by contrast, “African-American voter turnout has come to exceed white voter turnout in five of the six states originally covered by Section 5.”
The chief justice recalled the Freedom Summer of 1964, when the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered near Philadelphia, Miss., while working to register black voters. He mentioned Bloody Sunday in 1965, when police officers beat marchers seeking the right to vote in Selma, Ala.
“Today,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “both of those towns are governed by African-American mayors. Problems remain in these states and others, but there is no denying that, due to the Voting Rights Act, our nation has made great strides.”
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In summarizing her dissent from the bench, an unusual move and a sign of deep disagreement, Justice Ginsburg...the focus of the Voting Rights Act had properly changed from “first-generation barriers to ballot access” to “second-generation barriers” like racial gerrymandering and laws requiring at-large voting in places with a sizable black minority.
Speaking of racially motivated barriers to voting, Justice Ginsburg said: “Early attempts to cope with this vile infection resembled battling the Hydra. Whenever one form of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang up in its place.” She added: “When confronting the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination, and the most fundamental right in our democratic system, Congress’ power to act is at its height.”
 
The problem with the invalidated formula, in our view,[N.Y. Times]  is that it does not cover all the jurisdictions that have imposed or tried to impose techniques like racially discriminatory voter ID laws. Such efforts have become widespread in areas not governed by the preclearance rule.
 
"Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
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Invidious and pervasive voting discrimination has not come to an end, as Chief Justice Roberts suggested with his complaint that “Congress did not use the record it compiled to shape a coverage formula grounded in current conditions.”
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Tommy Coleman, a white lawyer in Albany, Ga., who helps cities and counties comply with the Voting Rights Act, said he suspected that black political success over the decades would forestall a broad rollback of minority gains in the South. “It’s not politically reasonable to think that the white majority will come in to re-establish a poll tax or anything like that,” he said.
Echoing the views of many on both sides of the debate, Mr. Coleman said that with voter ID laws in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and with problems with Hispanic access to the polls, maybe the South was not the center of the fight anymore. “I’m not so sure that there aren’t other jurisdictions in the country that are equally, if not more, in need of this than the South,” he said.
Jerry Wilson, a lawyer in central Georgia who has worked in Voting Rights Act litigation for 25 years, was not so sure.
“I think we’re in big trouble,” he said, reeling off a list of counties in the region that have up to now been hemmed in by the Voting Rights Act from making what he says were discriminatory voting changes. With the burden shifting from the jurisdictions to the affected voters to prove discrimination, he was contemplating the work ahead.
“The community groups that I worked with through the years,” he said, “they cannot handle this one on their own.”
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"As Congress correctly recognised in the hearings held in 2006 – racial and language minorities face significant voting discrimination in some parts of our country," said  Attorney General Eric Holder. "Given the successful decisions in the department's Voting Rights Act cases over the last 18 months, the need for a vital – and intact – Voting Rights Act remains clear."
... to voting rights advocates, the mere fact that Section 5 invalidated initiatives restricting voting as recently as last year shows that the formula Congress used to determine the need for a burden of proof of non-discrimination to be placed on jurisdictions is not outdated at all.
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Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented a black resident of the Alabama county that challenged the law, said: ..."Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation."