The Voting Rights Act and judicial activism

[Human_Action]

@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.