Top Perry Confidant Calls for an End to the Voting Rights Act

[sonias]

8. Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder

In the 2009 SCOTUS case where the court very narrowly limited it's ruling to that district, many of us feared it would be the end of the VRA. We certainly felt that the arguments and questions asked by the justices meant that they are moving to a future ruling that the VRA is unconstitutional. Primarily because it only applied to the South (for the most part) yet there is evidence of discrimination across the U.S.

Wikipedia entry on the case:
Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Austin_Municipal_Utility_District_No._1_v._Holder#cite_note-5

A great write up of the case and ruling here:

SCOTUS blog 2/08/10
NAMUDNO: Right Question, Wrong Case

(snip)In his opinion for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts stressed the legitimacy of the constitutional question. "Things have changed in the South," every member of the Court agreed – a point that Congress had barely acknowledged just three years earlier when it renewed section 5 for another quarter century. The provision is "extraordinary legislation otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system," Roberts wrote. An "extraordinary" provision demands an extraordinary context, and, at the oral argument, he signaled his own grave doubts about preclearance four decades after the act's initial passage. But, undoubtedly pleased at the prospect of near unanimity on the Court, he simply said the validity of the act "is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today."

(snip)

The Court had fine-tuned the bailout provision, which did little to change the law. Extrication from section 5 remains difficult – not only legally, but also politically. The real significance of this case thus lies not in what was held but rather what was foreshadowed.

NAMUDNO invites another case that properly frames the core constitutional issues. Why was Georgia but not Ohio (where serious voter fraud was alleged in 2004) still in federal receivership? The Texas utility district contained no districts that could be gerrymandered to create safe minority legislative seats. Distributing voters on the basis of race and ethnicity to secure minority representation was a necessity when southern whites would not vote for black candidates, but were such suspect classifications still justified? Those are the central constitutional questions that the right section 5 case would raise.

Even if we survive the Texas photo voter ID case this time, these cases will continue and continue until the republicans get what they want - a total destruction of voter protection.