Courts & Law

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Civil rights leader and icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who was nearly beaten to death on Bloody Sunday marching for the right to vote, was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC today about the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County. John Lewis: SCOTUS ‘stabbed’ civil rights law ‘in its very heart’:

Georgia Congressman Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader for the last five decades, sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to strip a key enforcement mechanism from the Voting Rights Act, enacted nearly a half century ago to protect minority voters.

“What the Supreme Court did today is stab the Voting Rights Act of
1965 in its very heart,” Lewis told Mitchell Tuesday, calling the 5-4
decision to strike down the formula Congress used to determine which
districts require federal oversight of voting rules “a major step back.”

“We may not have people being beaten today, maybe they
are not being denied the right to participate or to register to vote,
they’re not being chased by police dogs or trampled by horses. But in
the 11 states of the old Confederacy and even in some of the states
outside of the South, there’s been a systematic, deliberate attempt to
take us back to another period. These men that voted to strip the Voting
Rights Act of its power, they never stood in unmovable lines.  They
never had to pass a so-called literacy test. It took us almost a hundred
years to get where we are today. So will it take another hundred years
to fix it, to change it?”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Well, that didn't take long. Demonstrating just how wrong the Supreme Court was in Shelby County, the state of Texas, a covered jurisdiction with a long and sordid history of minority voter suppression, took the court's opinion as a green-light to engage in unbridled voter suppression.

The National Journal reports, That Was Quick: Texas Moves Forward With Voter ID Law After Supreme Court Ruling:

Just hours after the Supreme Court handed down a ruling
that guts parts of the Voting Rights Act, Texas is moving forward with a
controversial voter ID law that state Attorney General Greg Abbott
hopes to implement right away.

"With today's decision, the state's voter ID law will take effect immediately," Abbott said in a statement to the Dallas Morning News. "Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government."

The Texas law requires voters to show photo identification to vote—a
measure that was blocked by the Justice Department, arguing the law
could discriminate against racial minorities. At the time, Attorney
General Eric Holder called the law a "poll tax."

* * *

Although the Justice Department still maintains the right to approve
voting-rights laws in counties that have historically implemented
discriminatory laws against minorities, Congress now needs to determine
those areas.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen reports, Leahy vows 'immediate action' on Voting Rights Act:

With the future of the Voting Rights Act back in the hands of lawmakers, it's heartening to see that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) wasted no time this morning in vowing action.

"Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has protected minorities of all
races from discriminatory practices in voting for nearly 50 years, yet
the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the coverage formula
effectively guts the ability of Section 5 to protect voters from
discriminatory practices. I could not disagree more with this result or
the majority's rationale. The Voting Rights Act has been upheld five
times by the Supreme Court on prior occasions, and Section 5 was
reauthorized and signed into law by a Republican President in 2006 after
a thorough and bipartisan process in which Congress overwhelmingly
determined that the law was still vital to protecting minority voting
rights and that the coverage formula determining the jurisdictions to be
covered was still applicable. Several lower court decisions in recent
years have found violations of the Voting Rights Act and evidence of
intentional discrimination in covered jurisdictions. Despite this sound
record, and the weight of history, a narrow majority has decided today
to substitute its own judgment over the exhaustive legislative findings
of Congress.

As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I intend to take immediate
action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting
Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting."

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Mark Graber at Balkinization blog (balkin.blogspot.com) makes a point that struck me about Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion in Shelby County today. The Missing Amendments:

From 1861 to 1865, the United States fought a civil
war.  The outcome of the war were three
constitutional amendments, military rule in the south, and numerous federal
laws minutely regulating political procedures in the former confederate states.  The constitutional significance of the Civil
War and Reconstruction remains a source of political and scholarly debate, but
no one denies that something of great constitutional importance happened during
the 1860s.  Until today.

One of the
most remarkable features of Chief Justice Roberts' opinion for the Court in
Shelby County v. Holder is the almost complete absence of any reference to the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil War, or anything
that happened during Reconstruction. The
only provisions the Chief Justice deemed relevant were the Necessary and Proper
Clause of Article I and the Tenth Amendment [the court uses an "equal state sovereignty" principle to invalidate the federal law].

In this new world, the Civil War and
Reconstruction never occurred or, as the Dunning School maintained, they
were blots on American constitutionalism that ought to be erased. The Roberts opinion reads as if a new legal principle is emerging, later
constitutional provisions are interpreted and modified in light of earlier
provisions, rather than earlier provisions being interpreted in light of later
provisions.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning struck down the coverage formula provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section 4. Chief Justice Roberts writing for the Court held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance.

Chief Justice Roberts writes that Section 4 is unconstitutional in light of current conditions. In 1966, the formula was rational in both practice and theory. Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The Court makes clear that "Our decision in no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in [Section] 2. We issue no holding on [Section] 5 itself, only on the coverage formula [of Section 4]. Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions."