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DEL.ICIO.USU.S. Supreme Court to decide if Voting Rights racial protections still needed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eleven days before Barack Obama’s inauguration, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is still needed to protect black and other minority voters in Georgia and five other Southern states.
This from the New York Times:
The court’s decision in the case, expected by June, will help define the Roberts court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. opposed efforts to expand the voting rights law in 1982 as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, and he has expressed skepticism on the court about racial classifications made by the government.
The decision will also have significant practical consequences for elections in 16 states.
“This could be the biggest election law case on the court’s docket since Bush v. Gore,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
The case concerns the requirements in Section 5 of the law that certain state and local governments, mostly in the South, must obtain permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes affecting voting.
The requirement applies to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and scores of counties and townships in other states that Congress found had a history of discrimination at the polls.
The case under review comes out of Texas, and involves an Austin utility district.
My AJC colleague Bill Rankin just hung up the phone with Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project in Atlanta.
McDonald was not surprised the court agreed to hear the challenge to the key provision but predicted Section 5 will be upheld.
“The court has rejected every challenge that’s ever been brought to the constitutionality of Section 5,” he said.
Congress compiled a comprehensive record for the continuing need for reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, McDonald said. It passed the Senate unanimously and cleared the House by a 390-33 vote.
“I think that under those circumstances it will be difficult for the court to find it unconstitutional,” he said.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, of course, is agin any change in the legal reach of the Voting Rights Act:
“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the most powerful and effective piece of legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in the last half of the 20th century to insure the rights of all people to participate in the democratic process.
“During the recent congressional reauthorization of certain sections of the act, the House and Senate were presented with undeniable evidence that voting rights discrimination still exists in many political subdivisions throughout America. All parts of the act are still needed today to help protect the voting rights of American citizens. ”
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Comments
By outhoused
January 10, 2009 12:14 AM | Link to this
The problem with the voting rights act is it affects only part of the country. It either should have affect in all on the country or none of the country.