# The Voting Rights Act and judicial activism

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-voting-rights-act-and-judicial-activism/661920>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 25, 2013, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-voting-rights-act-and-judicial-activism/661920 "2013-06-25T23:00:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-voting-rights-act-and-judicial-activism/661920/81 "2013-06-27T13:39:19Z")

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> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> Of course, four Supreme Court justices disagree with you.

Actually five do, in Thomas’ concurrence he wrote that he’d have gone further and found Section 5 to be unconstitutional altogether, thus eliminating all pre-clearance. I’m in the middle with Roberts: pre-clearance is fine, but it needs to be related to current conditions to justify unequal sovereignty.

Ginsberg’s objection also seems to duck the issue of _which_ districts, right now, should pre-clear, and whether this should be based on current conditions or those of 47 years ago:

> [@](#):
>
> As the record for the 2006 reauthorization makes abundantly clear, second-generation barriers to minority voting rights have emerged in the covered jurisdictions as attempted _substitutes_ for the first-generation barriers that originally triggered preclearance in those jurisdictions.

Note that she doesn’t address second-generation barriers outside of covered jurisdictions.

> [@](#):
>
> The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclearance is no longer needed.

That pre-clearance is no longer needed isn’t the point of Roberts’ opinion, it’s that the way pre-clearance is imposed is the problem. Ginsberg is arguing against Thomas’ view, not Roberts’ and the majority’s.

> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> (Question – should I be capitalizing Supreme Court? How about Congress, Senate, and House?)

I think so, on all four, they are proper nouns. Not _a_ court but the Supreme Court.

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