"Obama's Election The End Of Voting Rights Protection?"

 1965 Voting rights demonstration in McComb, Mississippi.

The U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider overturning a central aspect of the Voting Rights Act, setting up a constitutional showdown over Congress’s power to protect the rights of minorities at the polling place.

The court will review the requirement that voting districts in eight states, along with parts of eight others, get Justice Department clearance before changing their district lines or election procedures. A small Texas utility district is challenging the clearance requirement, calling it an unwarranted intrusion on states’ rights.

A decision overturning preclearance, also known as Section 5, would mark 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.

“Section 5 simply has no parallel as an intrusion by the federal government into the sovereignty reserved to the states in the constitutional structure,” the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 argued in its appeal.

The voting-rights case will test 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, and his administration is now joining civil rights groups in urging the high court to uphold Section 5.

“Congress found that covered jurisdictions continue to adopt, employ and perpetuate techniques to suppress and dilute the vote of minority citizens,” Bush’s lawyers argued in court papers.

That argument is one that the Obama administration will now inherit. The high court probably will hear arguments in April and rule by the end of June.

The Supreme Court has on four occasions upheld the preclearance requirement as a legitimate means of enforcing the Constitution’s 15th Amendment, which bars states from restricting voting on the basis of race.

Northwest Austin says those decisions are now outdated and that Congress in 2006 lacked enough evidence of racial discrimination to justify the preclearance requirement. The appeal also faults Congress for relying on a decades-old formula to determine which states are covered by Section 5.

That formula “bears no more meaningful relationship to the problem of voting discrimination as it existed in 2006 than if Congress had decided covered jurisdictions by playing pin-the- tail-on-the-donkey,” the utility district argued. Northwest Austin’s lead lawyer, Gregory Coleman, is a former law clerk to conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

Bush administration lawyers countered that “Congress chose to cover particular jurisdictions based on their extensive records of discriminating against minority voters” and that “even today, there is more voting discrimination in covered jurisdictions.”

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.

One issue for the justices will be the level of deference they should accord to lawmakers. In 1966, the justices said Congress “may use any rational means” to advance the goals of the 15th Amendment. Northwest Austin is urging the court to apply a less deferential standard that they have used in other contexts.

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has voiced concern about the Voting Rights Act and governmental considerations of race. In a 2006 case involving the Voting Rights Act, Roberts wrote: “It is a sordid business, this divvying up by race.”

The justices in their current term already are scrutinizing a separate provision in the Voting Rights Act that protects against the dilution of minority influence at the polls. The question is whether that provision applies when minorities can elect their preferred candidate only with help from whites.

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 says it has never been accused of voting-related discrimination.

The American Civil Liberties Union represents an African-American voter who lives in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One, the jurisdiction that brought the challenge. A number of civil rights organizations are also participating in the lawsuit.

The Voting Rights Act provision, known as Section 5, requires certain jurisdictions that have a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain advance permission from the federal government before changing their election laws. Congress overwhelmingly approved the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in the summer of 2006 and President Bush signed it into law. Yet, in a direct challenge to this crucial civil rights law, the Austin utility district asked a federal court to declare Section 5 unconstitutional.

In May 2008, a federal district court soundly rebuffed the district's request to have the provision declared unconstitutional.

The following can be attributed to Laughlin McDonald, Director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project:

"Racial and language minorities remain politically vulnerable, warranting the continued protection the Voting Rights Act provides. Despite significant progress over the years, the Voting Rights Act's preclearance provision remains an essential tool to remedy and prevent discrimination at the ballot box. Without this protection, too many citizens will be denied the opportunity to exercise their right to vote, or will have their votes diluted. We are hopeful that the Court will uphold the Voting Rights Act in its entirety so that we can continue to make progress."

The following can be attributed to Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the ACLU:

"The constitutionality of Section 5 has been repeatedly challenged, but the Court has dismissed those challenges each and every time. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will affirm the lower court's decision so that the voting rights of all Americans will be more secure. It would be a grave mistake to dismantle a law that has protected voting rights for more than a generation."

    Does the election of Barack Obama as the first black American President mean the end of the necessity of the Voting Rights Act meant to protect the voting rights of minorities? Apparently the current Supreme Court thinks that just might be the case, despite President Bush and his then Republican controlled Congress voting to extend the Voting Rights Act in 2006. Chief Justice John Roberts in a 2006 case involving the Voting Rights Act wrote: “It is a sordid business, this divvying up by race”, indicating a bias against Civil Rights legislation. As I see it, Barack Obama being elected President would have been a lot harder without the Voting Rights Act. As I see it, there are plenty of political office seekers and voters on the local, state and national level that are still in need of voting rights protection, even under the Obama Administration. Thank Heaven for the ACLU and other organizations fighting to protect minority voting rights. Hopefully President Elect Obama will speak up in defense of the Voting Rights Act in the near future. The Voting Rights Act is both Constitutional and necessary, as I see it.

tags: voting rights act  supreme court  john roberts  barack obama  politics  civil rights  aclu  takebackamerica  

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