| Businessweek | - |
A
divided U.S. Supreme Court threw out a core part of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, rolling back a landmark law that opened the polls to
millions of southern blacks.
State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., March 7, 1965. Photograph: AP Photo
Bloomberg News
Voting Rights Act Provision Struck Down by Top U.S. Court
June 25, 2013
Related
A
divided U.S. Supreme Court threw out a core part of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, rolling back a landmark law that opened the polls to
millions of southern blacks.
The justices, voting 5-4, struck
down the law’s formula for determining which states must get federal
approval before changing their election rules. The ruling all but
invalidates that preclearance requirement, leaving it without force
unless Congress can enact a new method for determining which
jurisdictions are covered. The ruling marks one of the biggest civil rights decisions in decades. It’s the boldest step yet by Chief Justice John Roberts’s conservative majority to cut back legal protections that have benefited racial minorities since the 1960s. The decision blocks a tool the Justice Department has used to halt thousands of state and local voting changes, including identification laws in Texas and South Carolina last year.
“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” Roberts wrote for the court.
The justices will issue the final rulings of their nine-month term tomorrow, including decisions on gay marriage. The court yesterday ordered tougher judicial scrutiny of university affirmative action programs.
Today’s ruling had an immediate effect in Texas, where a voter ID law had been blocked by the Justice Department. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement today that the ID law will take effect “immediately.”
Obama ‘Disappointed’
“I am deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision today,” President Barack Obama said in a statement released by the White House. The ruling “upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.”The court split along familiar ideological lines. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito joined Roberts in the majority. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
Under the preclearance requirement, all or parts of 15 states had to get federal approval before changing election districts, amending voting rules or even moving a polling place. The Justice Department used that provision, which covers virtually the entire South, to object to more than 2,400 state and local voting changes from 1982 to 2006.
Old Formula
The court majority faulted Congress for relying on a decades-old formula for determining which states were covered by the preclearance requirement, also known as Section 5. The formula ties coverage to voter registration rates, turnout and ballot-box rules in the 1960s and early 1970s.“Those extraordinary and unprecedented features were reauthorized -- as if nothing had changed,” Roberts wrote. “In fact, the act’s unusual remedies have grown even stronger.”
The court left Section 5 itself intact. Thomas wrote that he would have invalidated that as well.
Congress reauthorized the law in 2006, extending it for 25 years on lopsided votes: 98-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House. Then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed the measure into law.
‘Errs Egregiously’
“After exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process, Congress reauthorized the VRA, including the coverage provision, with overwhelming bipartisan support,” wrote Ginsburg, who read a summary of her dissent from the bench to give it added emphasis. “In my judgment, the court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’s decision.”The Voting Rights Act was enacted to combat discrimination that kept black people away from Southern polling places for generations. A separate section of the law bars voting discrimination nationwide and isn’t affected by the high court case.
Roberts said Congress “may draft another formula based on current conditions.” Still, political realities are likely to make that task difficult, if not impossible.
“As long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance,” Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.
No comments:
Post a Comment