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.
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.
... 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."