High court eyes Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON —- In a case with potentially profound political implications for Georgia, the Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a challenge to a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that is designed to prevent discrimination in elections.

The arguments, in the case brought by a municipal utility district in Texas, is a test of whether Georgia, Texas and seven other Southern states with histories of racial discrimination must continue to get federal permission before changing voting rules. Also affected are parts of seven other states.

Under the current law, states and parts of states whose governments historically used Jim Crow-era laws to impose segregation in voting must get Department of Justice permission whenever they seek to do anything as simple as changing when early elections can be held, and as complex as redrawing political districts.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat from Atlanta and a leader of the civil rights movement that resulted in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, submitted a brief opposing changes to the law.

Wednesday, Lewis listened to arguments from a seat in the middle of the Supreme Court, his first visit there to hear a case in his nearly 23 years in Washington.

“It reminded me of some of the same debate of 1965,” Lewis said later. “This Act is one of the most progressive pieces of legislation the country ever passed, and it changed America forever. We don’t need to go back.”

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, submitted a personal brief opposing the continuation of Section 5 of the Act, saying that the election of a black president, among other things, shows that there’s no need for the law. Perdue hired a private lawyer to file the brief because the state’s attorney general refused to file it.

An attorney for the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1, which brought the case, said the rule lets the federal government improperly infringe on the sovereignty of states such as Texas and Georgia, penalizing them for past history in a way that’s no longer applicable.

The court’s conservative judges bolstered that argument.

“Congress has made the finding that the sovereignty of Georgia is less than the sovereign dignity of Ohio” and other states, said Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee who often is a swing vote on decisions on social issues.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, questioned whether the voting rights rule was trying to do something that may not really be needed anymore, comparing it to an “elephant whistle.”

“You know, I have this whistle to keep away the elephants,” Roberts said rhetorically. “Well, there are no elephants, so it must work.”

Others, however, said that while voter discrimination has declined, it’s still a problem.

Justice David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee who typically is among the high court’s more liberal members, rattled off a list of what he characterized as evidence of discrimination —- including a 16-point difference in Hispanic and non-Hispanic voter registration in Texas and 600 lawsuits throughout the country alleging voter discrimination.

“I don’t understand, with a record like that, how you can maintain as a basis for this suit that things have radically changed,” Souter asked attorney Gregory Coleman, who brought the case on behalf of the Texas utility district. “They may be better. But to say that they have radically changed … [is] to deny the empirical reality.”

The tiny utility district in the middle of Texas hasn’t done anything wrong. Opponents to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and racial classifications in employment convinced the district to become part of the case shortly after Congress reauthorized Section 5 for another 25 years back in 2006.

If the provision is struck down, it could weaken the argument for race-based decisions on voting, employment and education. It could also allow affected states and smaller governmental bodies within them to change their voting laws more freely to help incumbents and others.

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican from Coweta County who is helping lead Republican redistricting efforts in the House, said in a statement after Wednesday’s hearing that he was encouraged by the reactions he heard from the justices. Westmoreland was one of the biggest —- and few —- opponents to reauthorizing the provision when Congress reconsidered it in 2006. The U.S. Senate ultimately voted unanimously and the House voted 390-33 to reauthorize it.

“I have to have faith in the American system that the court will restore Georgia and other states to their rightful place as an equal partner in these United States,” Westmoreland said Wednesday.

Opponents to striking the rule say it could lead to gerrymandering and fewer elected minorities.

“We know where this will lead … we have seen what can happen,” said John Payton, president and director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Lewis, whose own election to Congress in 1986 was a testament to the Voting Rights Act, agreed.

“Discrimination is still real in the political process,” he said.

Other cases

The Supreme Court also:

Said accidentally shooting a gun during the commission of a crime should bring the same penalties as intentionally using a firearm. The ruling came as the court upheld the conviction and sentence of Christopher Michael Dean, who was arrested for trying to rob a bank in Rome, Ga., in 2004. A gun went off accidentally during the attempted robbery when Dean tried to switch the weapon from one hand to the other. The discharge brought an automatic 10-year sentence for firing a weapon during a crime. Dean appealed, saying the automatic sentence shouldn’t count since the firing of the gun was accidental. Federal prosecutors said the law doesn’t care why the gun went off, and the high court agreed.

Made it harder for defendants to keep their comments to jailhouse informants from being used against them at trial. Ruling in a Kansas case, the justices said a defendant’s statement to an informant can be used to poke holes in trial testimony, even if it was elicited in violation of the Constitution.

From news services