The Voting Rights Act

[Ruken]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-court-voting-idUSBRE95O0TU20130625

I didn’t see a new thread on this. 5-4 decision today.

[T]he justices ruled that Congress had used outdated facts in continuing to force nine states, mainly in the South, to get federal approval for voting rule changes affecting blacks and other minorities.

The court ruled in favor of officials from Shelby County, Alabama, by declaring unconstitutional a section of the law - most recently updated by Congress in 2006 - that set the formula that decides which states and locales with a history of racial discrimination need federal approval to change voting laws.

[Der_Trihs]

And Texas is already moving to take advantage of it with voter ID laws and gerrymandered voting districts.

“With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Abbott said, according to the Dallas Morning News. “Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”

<snip>

According to the Dallas Morning News, Texas’s Department of Public Safety has already announced that as of Thursday, “Photo identification will now be required when voting in elections in Texas.”

[davidm]

What did they base this ruling on? What part of the constitution was being violated?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/25/19138122-in-need-of-a-constitutional-rationale

So on what grounds, exactly, did the court find Sec. 4 of the VRA unconstitutional? I have no idea.

Assuming I’d missed something important, I asked the Constitutional Accountability Center’s David Gans to help me out. He told me:

[INDENT] "Your question highlights a fundamental flaw in Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. The Court strikes down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional without ever explaining what provision of the Constitution commands this result. Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion for the conservative majority argued that the Voting Rights Act provision was inconsistent with the ‘letter and spirit of the Constitution,’ but he never really explained why.

"His majority opinion emphasized that the Voting Rights Act diminished the sovereignty of states, ignoring that Fifteenth Amendment expressly gives to Congress broad power to prevent all forms of racial discrimination in voting by the states. As Justice Ginsburg's powerful dissent demonstrates, the Court's opinion cannot be squared with the text, history, and meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment."[/INDENT]

Is this correct? Is this ruling constitutionally baseless? Is this judicial activism?

Maddow is hardly unbiased, but I think she may be right here.

Is she missing something here or are her and Gans correct about this?

[Human_Action]

@Ruken

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-court-voting-idUSBRE95O0TU20130625

I didn’t see a new thread on this. 5-4 decision today.

Good, it’s about time. The law was never meant to last this long, and with under 0.1 percent of electoral changes by preclearance districts being objected to by DoJ, this was purely a “prophylactic” matter.

[Human_Action]

@Der_Trihs

And Texas is already moving to take advantage of it with voter ID laws and gerrymandered voting districts.

If you want voter ID requirements to be illegal, then make it illegal. Relying on the DoJ to prevent it through VRA pre-clearance, only in the states and districts that must be pre-cleared, is discriminatory and wildly ineffective at stopping voter ID laws nationwide.

[davidm]

But was there a real basis for the SCOTUS to rule against it?

Unnecessary - Noneffective - Purely Prophylactic

Aren’t those political opinions and isn’t this a political question? The court isn’t supposed to rule on the wisdom or usefulness of laws, they’re supposed to rule on the constitutionality.

[Der_Trihs]

@Human_Action

If you want voter ID requirements to be illegal, then make it illegal.

Except I don’t, and that’s not what the law forbade. Creating “voter ID laws” designed to suppress the vote of specific groups is what was illegal.

@Human_Action

Relying on the DoJ to prevent it through VRA pre-clearance, only in the states and districts that must be pre-cleared, is discriminatory and wildly ineffective at stopping voter ID laws nationwide.

It wasn’t supposed to stop voter ID laws; it was supposed to stop voter ID laws designed to suppress the vote of groups like racial minorities. It only stopped voter ID laws so often because about the only reason anyone proposed them was as attempts to suppress the votes of the poor and minorities. And that, it did well; and that is now what we’re going to see a lot more of. Probably resulting in a huge wave of lawsuits, along with riots and police brutality around election time.

[davidm]

Naive me; I thought we settled this stuff in the sixties. Are we really going to have to go through all of this shit again?

We need to get the reactionaries out of government while it’s still possible to vote them out.

[Human_Action]

@Der_Trihs

Except I don’t, and that’s not what the law forbade. Creating “voter ID laws” designed to suppress the vote of specific groups is what was illegal.

It wasn’t supposed to stop voter ID laws; it was supposed to stop voter ID laws designed to suppress the vote of groups like racial minorities. It only stopped voter ID laws so often because about the only reason anyone proposed them was as attempts to suppress the votes of the poor and minorities. And that, it did well; and that is now what we’re going to see a lot more of. Probably resulting in a huge wave of lawsuits, along with riots and police brutality around election time.

That’s covered by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which, as amended, states

No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard,
practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State
or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or
abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote
on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees
set forth in section 4(f)(2).5

And was unaffected by this ruling.

So, discriminatory laws are still illegal. But now, almost 12,000 districts aren’t required to prove to the DoJ in advance that any changes they might make aren’t discriminatory, on the basis that in 1964 they used voting tests or didn’t have enough minorities registered or turn out.

[Jas09]

I’m still waiting to hear what provision of the Constitution was violated. Surely the textualists voting with the majority can cite chapter and verse, not penumbras.

Claiming the law wasn’t mean to last “this long” seems a bit odd when it was renewed only 7 years ago. Surely laws aren’t unconstitutional merely because they are old.

[Der_Trihs]

@Human_Action

So, discriminatory laws are still illegal. But now, almost 12,000 districts aren’t required to prove to the DoJ in advance that any changes they might make aren’t discriminatory, on the basis that in 1964 they used voting tests or didn’t have enough minorities registered or turn out.

No; instead they’ll just pass discriminatory laws by the hundreds or thousands and force people to fight them one by one, and fail.

[Ruken]

@Human_Action

The law was never meant to last this long

I’m not necessarily objecting to anything else you wrote, but this seems like a non-argument, given how recently congress voted on it.

[Human_Action]

@Der_Trihs

No; instead they’ll just pass discriminatory laws by the hundreds or thousands and force people to fight them one by one, and fail.

Why aren’t the non-pre-cleared states doing this already? What’s unique about these 9?

[Human_Action]

@Jas09

Claiming the law wasn’t mean to last “this long” seems a bit odd when it was renewed only 7 years ago. Surely laws aren’t unconstitutional merely because they are old.

It had a sunset provision because it was an extraordinary remedy to an extraordinary problem. It was never intended to be permanent, which but for SCOTUS, it was apparently going to be.

@Ruken

I’m not necessarily objecting to anything else you wrote, but this seems like a non-argument, given how recently congress voted on it.

If they voted to amend Section 4 to use, say, 2012 election data for the formula, I’d agree. But they didn’t, Section 4 was still based on 1964 election data. Given that, the further we get from 1964, the less compelling the reason for the law becomes, and the harder it is to justify unequal sovereignty of the states. Until we get to 2013, and it’s not sufficiently compelling.