SCOTUS Watch: A Quiet Friday, Wait Until Monday. The Biden DOJ Finally Acts On Voting Rights

The Court decided three cases today not on our watch list, leaving 5 cases, including Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, until next week. Many Court observers believe that the Roberts Court will use this case to gut the remaining section 2 enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Friday, the Biden Department of Justice placed a bet that the Court will not gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

CNN reports that Justice Department is suing Georgia over voting restrictions:

The Justice Department is suing Georgia over new voting restrictions enacted as part of Republican efforts nationwide to limit voting access in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election defeat.

The state law imposes new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, empowers state officials to take over local elections boards, limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to approach voters in line to give them food and water.

Republicans had cast the measure as necessary to boost confidence in elections after the 2020 election and Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims of fraud, but Democrats in the state have called the new law voter suppression and likened it to Jim Crow-era voting laws.

The lawsuit, coming days after Senate Republicans sunk their Democratic counterparts’ signature voting and election bill during a key test vote, represents an early example of the Biden administration attempting to use the levers of government to try to block restrictive state laws.

Though President Joe Biden has underscored independence between the Oval Office and the Justice Department, he has nonetheless indicated that voting rights is a major agenda item for his entire administration.

“This lawsuit filed is the first of many steps we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote that all lawful votes are counted and that every voter has access to accurate information,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Friday.

Civil Rights Division leader Kristen Clarke said the Georgia law is aimed at Black and minority voters.

“These legislative actions occurred at a time when the Black population in Georgia continues to steadily increase and after a historic election that saw record voter turnout across the state, particularly for absentee voting, which Black voters are now more likely to use than White voters,” Clarke said during the news conference. “Our complaint challenges several provisions of SB 202 on the grounds that they were adopted with the intent to deny or a bridge, Black citizens, equal access to the political process.”

One of the worst voter suppressors in modern America, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp who is governor only because as the former Secretary of State he engaged in widespread voter suppression to give him the edge he needed to win a close election, “issued a defiant statement in response to the department’s announcement, calling the lawsuit “born out of the lies and misinformation the Biden administration has pushed against Georgia’s Election Integrity Act from the start.”

Kemp is channelling the ghost of George Wallace.

Kemp accused the administration of “weaponizing the US Department of Justice to carry out their far-left agenda that undermines election integrity and empowers federal government overreach in our democracy.”

“States Rights!” The rallying cry of Southern segregationists.

Actually, they are simply using the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments.

The current Secretary of State, who many lionized for his standing up to Donald Trump asking him to “find the votes” he needed to win Georgia, but who is really no better than his predecessor, “Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said it’s ‘no surprise that (the DOJ) would operationalize their lies with the full force of the federal government. I look forward to meeting them, and beating them, in court.'”

“States rights!” The rallying cry of Southern segregationists.

Where are the Confederate battle flags?

Following the Georgia law’s passage, Biden called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation that would counter measures like it.

The President at the time called the Georgia law “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity.”

DOJ using Voting Rights Act

The Justice Department is suing Georgia under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It forbids voting qualifications that “result” in the “denial or abridgment” of the right to vote “on account of race.”
Challenges under Section 2 can only be brought once the regulation at hand has gone into effect.

Garland’s efforts, however, could be impacted by a current Supreme Court case, Brnovich v. DNC, where the Republican National Committee and Arizona’s attorney general are defending two provisions of state law against a Section 2 challenge brought by the Democratic National Committee.

One regulation wholly rejects ballots for local, state and national races if they are cast in the wrong precinct [the “right church, wrong pew” rule] and another says that only certain persons — like family members — may deliver another person’s completed ballot to the polling place. [What Republicans call “ballot harvesting”.]

A federal appeals court invalidated both under Section 2, stressing the state’s “long history of race-based discrimination against its American Indian, Hispanic and African American citizens.”

Now the DNC is fearful that the Supreme Court will limit the reach of Section 2 and allow the provisions to remain in effect.

Before the Justice Department’s action Friday, at least seven lawsuits already had been filed, challenging its provisions.

Shortly after it was passed in March, the law had already been challenged in court by a trio of voting rights groups: the New Georgia Project, the Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise Inc. The lawsuit said the new law “disproportionately impacts Black voters, and interacts with these vestiges of discrimination in Georgia to deny Black voters (an) equal opportunity to participate in the political process and/or elect a candidate of their choice.”

Opponents of Georgia’s law applauded the DOJ’s move, with NAACP President Derrick Johnson saying it “speaks to the level of urgency that is needed to protect our fragile democracy and ensure that all voices are heard.”

More action from DOJ to come, including on audits

Also Friday, the Justice Department announced a task force to address the rise in threats against election officials. Jurisdictions across the country, especially with high-stake local elections like in Fulton County, Georgia, reported receiving threats and racist taunts.

Garland said that the Justice Department will decide to file more federal civil lawsuits against states that have passed restrictive voting laws.

“We’re looking at laws that were passed before, as well as the ones that have been recently passed, and as they are being passed, and we’ll make the same kind of judgment that we made with respect to this one,” Garland said.

This year alone, 14 states have passed controversial voting rights laws that Garland flagged.

“Some jurisdictions, based on disinformation, have utilized abnormal post-election audit methodologies that may put the integrity of the voting process at risk and undermine public confidence in our democracy,” the attorney general said.

This weekend, Activists Are Heading To D.C. To Rally For Voting Rights:

Sixty years after John Lewis and other civil rights activists set out on Freedom Rides to desegregate buses, a new generation is mounting a modern Freedom Ride for voting rights.

The group Black Voters Matter has been traveling by bus through the American South holding rallies, and teach-ins aimed at helping local activists learn about the sacrifices, strategies and successes of the civil rights movement.

“We who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes,” says co-founder LaTosha Brown. “The South has always been, I think particularly Black people in the South have always pierced the consciousness of this nation.”

This week in Atlanta, buses emblazoned with images of the original freedom riders pulled up at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, a symbolic stop on a journey that ends with a rally at the nation’s capital Saturday to call for Washington, D.C. statehood and for Congress to pass voter protections.

Georgia — where Black Voters Matter is based — has been at the center of the voting rights debate ever since the state flipped and voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president, and, in hotly-contested runoffs, elected two Democratic senators, shifting control of the U.S. Senate. Tight margins led to multiple recounts, unproven allegations of widespread fraud, and seemingly endless litigation.

It was a cycle that saw unprecedented voter turnout, and in a pandemic, a surge of mail-in absentee ballots. Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a sweeping new voting law that added new requirements for absentee voting among other things. Now at least 14 states have passed similar voting restrictions.

Black Voters Matter say it’s about marginalizing minority voters.

NPR: Listen to the full story — including scenes from the road — here.