Supreme Court’s decision....is a constitutional train wreck of historic proportions [View all]

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from truthdig:


Gutting the Voting Rights Act

Posted on Jun 25, 2013
By Bill Blum


No matter how you parse it, the Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, is a constitutional train wreck of historic proportions. But unlike most such disasters, this is one we saw coming.

In 2009, in an otherwise obscure case involving a Texas utility district with an elected board of directors (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder) that was brought to the court by the same group of right-wing activists that engineered the Shelby County case, Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion questioned the continued validity of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That section requires states and localities with a legacy of electoral discrimination to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department or the courts before implementing new voting laws and procedures. Currently, nine states—mostly in the Deep South, along with a smattering of counties and cities elsewhere—are covered by Section 5.

In Tuesday’s fractious 5-4 Shelby County opinion, also authored by Roberts, the court left Section 5 standing but declared Section 4 of the act unconstitutional, which sets forth the formula for determining which jurisdictions across the country are subject to preclearance requirements. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reasoned in an impassioned dissent joined by the court’s liberals, without the Section 4 formula, Section 5, along with all its vital safeguards, is effectively “immobilized.”

At the heart of the Roberts opinion is the view that racism in America is a thing of the past. When the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, Roberts wrote, “the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.” .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/gutting_the_voting_rights_act_20130625/