Tag Archives: Voting Rights Act

April 29, 2013 · 10:34 AM

After Casting Key Fifth Vote For Bush, Justice O’Connor Now Regrets Bush v. Gore

How could she have lived with herself all those years?

Think Progress

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the conservative retired justice who provided the fifth vote to install George W. Bush as president, is now having second thoughts about that decision:

Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken [Bush v. Gore].

“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”

The case, she said, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”

“Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision,” she said. “It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.“

If nothing else, Bush v. Gore demonstrates how justices who are determined to reach a certain result are capable of bending both the law and their own prior jurisprudence in order to achieve it. In Bush, the five conservative justices held, in the words of Harvard’s Larry Tribe, that “equal protection of the laws required giving no protection of the laws to the thousands of still uncounted ballots.”

The Court’s decision to hand the presidency to Bush stunned many legal observers, some of whom were O’Connor’s fellow justices. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens once recounted a story where he ran into fellow Justice Stephen Breyer at a party while a relatively early phase of the case was pending before the Court. According to Stevens, “[w]e agreed that the application was frivolous.”

Indeed, Bush’s own lawyers were skeptical of the legal theory that ultimately made up the basis of the Court’s decision in Bush. As Ben Ginsberg, a top lawyer on Bush’s presidential campaign, explained in 2006, “just like really with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.”

And, yet, O’Connor and four of her fellow Republicans joined together to embrace a particularly aggressive reading of Equal Protection — at least so long as it could put George W. Bush in the White House.

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March 26, 2013 · 5:01 PM

Alito’s provocative question

The last time we visited oral arguments from The Court was in Shelby County v. Holder (a voting rights case), in which Justice Antonin Scalia famously stated that the Voting Rights Act was “perpetuation of racial entitlement”.

That was more of a shocker than Justice Samuel Alito stating that assessing  the effects of “marriage equality” is a newer development than cell phones or the Internet.  Scalia’s statement was purely racist and insulting…in my opinion Alito’s argument says: “we need a lot more time on this issue…”

The Maddow Blog

Justice Samuel Alito

I’m still working my way through the transcript (pdf) of today’s Supreme Court oral argument on California’s Prop 8, but there’s one quote that already seems to be generating quite a bit of attention. It comes by way of Justice Samuel Alito:

“Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is very new. I think it was first adopted in The Netherlands in 2000. So there isn’t a lot of data about its effect. And it may turn out to be a — a good thing; it may turn out not to be a good thing, as the supporters of Proposition 8 apparently believe.

“But you want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution, which is newer than cell phones or the Internet? I mean we — we are not — we do not have the ability to see the future. On a question like that, of such fundamental importance, why should it not be left for the people, either acting through initiatives and referendums or through their elected public officials?”

Alito’s argument seems to be one focused on the calendar. Perhaps, the theory goes, millions of Americans can be denied equal rights for an indefinite period of time, and jurists can revisit the issue in the future. At that point, they can ask once more whether or not allowing two consenting adults to get married is “a good thing.”

Remember the fine print in the Declaration of Independence? We have an inalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, just so long as the specific type of happiness is older than mobile telephones.

I’m not altogether sure what Alito thinks might happen, even if he had “the ability to see the future,” but the larger question seems to be the justice’s willingness to leave marriage rights “for the people.” What’s wrong with that? The answer, I suspect, has something to do with the nature of rights — they are, by definition, opportunities afforded to people that cannot be taken away without due process.

Rights are not supposed to be open to popularity contests. Throughout American history, if all contentious decisions over civil rights were left solely to popular will and the political process, progress would have been very slow, indeed. It’s precisely why Americans have turned to their last available option — the courts — as a way of ensuring their rights are protected.

What’s more, as Solicitor General Donald Virrelli reminded Alito, opponents of marriage equality aren’t seeking a pause to progress, or decisions through initiatives, referendums, or the political process — they’re seeking constitutional amendments to permanently limit the rights of same-sex couples.

Virrelli also reminded the justices:

“[T]he principal argument in 1967 with respect to Loving and that the Commonwealth of Virginia advanced was: Well, the social science is still uncertain about how biracial children will fare in this world, and so you ought to apply rational basis scrutiny and wait. And I think the Court recognized that there is a cost to waiting and that that has got to be part of the equal protection calculus.”

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March 15, 2013 · 6:00 AM

America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA)

I’m all for quashing the NRA’s Reign of Terror over politicians and the American People.

Michael Moore’s suggestions in the following article are prefaced by historical context.  He writes about the gruesome deaths and beatings in the south during the civil rights era.  Moore argues that the pictures broadcasted and published all over the country changed the course of that movement.  Moore also argues that pictures broadcast from Viet Nam changed America’s perception of that war.  Moore theorizes that if America saw a lone picture of one of the babies shot with Adam Lanza’s killing machine, it would once again change the face of the gun debate.  Is he right?  I think he is.

Michael Moore

The year was 1955. Emmett Till was a young African American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day Emmett was seen “flirting” with a white woman in town, and for that he was mutilated and murdered at the age of fourteen. He was found with part of a cotton gin tied around his neck with a string of barbed wire. His killers, two white men, had shot him in the head before they dumped him in the river.

Emmett Till’s body was found and returned to Chicago. To the shock of many, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that the public could see what happens to a little boy’s body when bigots decide he is less than human. She wanted photographers to take pictures of her mutilated son and freely publish them. More than 10,000 mourners came to the funeral home, and the photo of Emmett Till appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

“I just wanted the world to see,” she said. “I just wanted the world to see.”

The world did see, and nothing was ever the same again for the white supremacists of the United States of America. Because of Emmett Till, because of that shocking photograph of this little dead boy, just a few months later, “the revolt officially began on December 1, 1955″ (from Eyes on the Prize) when Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The historic bus boycott began and, with the images of Emmett Till still fresh in the minds of many Americans, there was no turning back.

In March of 1965, the police of Selma, Alabama, brutally beat, hosed and tear-gassed a group of African Americans for simply trying to cross a bridge during a protest march. The nation was shocked by images of blacks viciously maimed and injured. So, too, was the President. Just one week later, Lyndon Johnson called for a gathering of the U.S. Congress and he went and stood before them in joint session and told them to pass a bill he was introducing that night – the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And, just five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

[...]

But I have a prediction. I believe someone in Newtown, Connecticut – a grieving parent, an upset law enforcement officer, a citizen who has seen enough of this carnage in our country – somebody, someday soon, is going to leak the crime scene photos of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And when the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child’s body, that’s the day the jig will be up for the NRA. It will be the day the debate on gun control will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.

Of course, there will be a sanctimonious hue and cry from the pundits who will decry the publication of these gruesome pictures. Those who do publish or post them will be called “shameful” and “disgraceful” and “sick.” How could a media outlet be so insensitive to the families of the dead children! Someone will then start a boycott of the magazine or website that publishes them.

But this will be a false outrage. Because the real truth is this: We do not want to be confronted with what the actual results of a violent society looks like. Of what a society that starts illegal wars, that executes criminals (or supposed criminals), that strikes or beats one of its women every 15 seconds, and shoots 30 of its own citizens every single day looks like. Oh, no, please – DO NOT MAKE US LOOK AT THAT!

Because if we were to seriously look at the 20 slaughtered children – I mean really look at them, with their bodies blown apart, many of them so unrecognizable the only way their parents could identify them was by the clothes they were wearing – what would be our excuse not to act? Now. Right now. This very instant! How on earth could anyonenot spring into action the very next moment after seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of these little boys and girls?

We don’t know exactly what those Newtown photographs show. But I want you – yes, you, the person reading this right now – to think about what we do know:

The six-year and seven-year-old children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were each hit up to eleven times by a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. The muzzle velocity of a rifle like the AR-15 is about three times that of a handgun. And because the kinetic energy of a bullet equals one-half of the bullet’s mass multiplied by its velocity squared, the potential destructive power of a bullet fired from a rifle is about nine times more than that of a similar bullet fired from a handgun.

Continued here…

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March 3, 2013 · 1:21 PM

VP Joe Biden and AG Eric Holder in Selma today for “Bloody Sunday” commemoration

selma-bridge-cross-2013.jpg

Police ready Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge for the Sunday, March 3, 2013, commemoration of Bloody Sunday. (Vasha Hunt/al.com)

AL.com

SELMA, Alabama — Vice President Joe Biden is in Selma this morning for the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the violent 1965 clash between law enforcement and protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a march for voting rights.

Images of the clash in which officers wielded billy clubs and tear gas against protesters helped galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Biden will speak at noon at the Unity Day Brunch. He will then join a crowd expected to numbers in the thousands as the group makes the annual symbolic crossing across the bridge.

Biden’s visit comes four days after the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which requires states with a history of discrimination to get Justice Department approval before making any change to election procedure. The case is out of Alabama’s Shelby County. Shelby County argued the South and Shelby County has changed and the oversight is no longer needed.

On March 7, 1965 marchers made it just a few blocks from the churches where they had assembled. When they reached Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were attacked by state troopers and Dallas County deputies, some on horseback wielding billy clubs and firing canisters of tear gas into the marchers.

The attack was broadcast on national news programs and reported in newspapers throughout the country.

Eight days later, President Lyndon Johnson called a joint session of the Congress where he proposed the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. Later that year, 100 years after the end of the Civil War, African-Americans were guaranteed the right to vote.

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February 28, 2013 · 1:13 PM

Sotomayor Leads Liberal Justices In Defending The Voting Rights Act

Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor is acknowledged by President Barack Obama at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 34th Annual Awards Gala at the Washington Convention Center, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor is acknowledged by President Barack Obama at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 34th Annual Awards Gala at the Washington Convention Center, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

TPMDC

Seemingly aware that they were outnumbered and fighting an uphill battle, the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court defended the Voting Rights Act during Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday with a mix of sharp questions, appeals to history, and indirect rejoinders to the more conservative justices.

All four of them participated actively in oral arguments. None was more emphatic than Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The Obama-appointed justice asked the first question of the day. She hammered Burt Rein, the lawyer representing the challengers, Shelby County of Alabama, over its record of discrimination. The county contends that Section 5 is unfair to its residents and other jurisdictions that it requires to obtain federal pre-clearance before changing their voting laws.

“Assuming I accept your premise, and there’s some question about that, that some portions of the South have changed, your county pretty much hasn’t,” Sotomayor said of Shelby County, which is 90 percent white. “In the period we’re talking about, it has many more discriminating -­- 240 discriminatory voting laws that were blocked by Section 5 objections. … You may be the wrong party bringing this.”

“Why would we vote in favor of a county whose record is the epitome of what caused the passage of this law to start with?” she asked, wondering why the Court should invalidate Section 5 if, as she argued, any formula would cover Shelby County. “Discrimination is discrimination.”

While Section 5 was taking a beating at the hands of the conservative justices, the four liberal-leaning justices targeted various audiences. Sometimes they played to each other, sometimes to the conservative justices they hoped to sway, sometimes to the future Court, sometimes to the public audience.

Justice Stephen Breyer several times tried to needle the lawyers defending the Voting Rights Act into addressing conservatives’ concerns. Other times, he did so himself.

“The disease is still there in the state,” he said. “Of course this is aimed at states. What do you think the Civil War was about? Of course it was aimed at treating some states differently than others.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the liberty of knocking down what she viewed as a straw man argument by attorney Rein.

“Mr. Rein, you keep emphasizing over and over again in your brief registration and you said it a couple of times this morning,” she said. “Congress was well aware that registration was no longer the problem. This legislative record is replete with what they call second generation devices. Congress said up front: We know that the registration is fine. That is no longer the problem. But the discrimination continues in other forms.”

Justice Elena Kagan twice said the Section 5 coverage formula has been working “pretty well” when it comes to snuffing out voter discrimination where it’s most likely to emanate. When Rein argued that it’s the courts, not Congress, who should determine whether the coverage formula is legitimate, she sounded shocked.

“That’s a big new power you’re giving us,” Kagan said, “that we have the power to determine when racial discrimination has ended. I did not think we had that power.”

In the final moments of the argument, Sotomayor, apparently taken aback by Justice Antonin Scalia’s statement that Section 5 is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement,” put the question to Shelby County’s lawyer.

“Do you think that the right to vote is a racial entitlement in Section 5?” she asked Rein. When he dodged, she asked him again: “I asked a different question. Do you think Section 5 was voted for because it was a racial entitlement?” He dodged again.

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February 27, 2013 · 6:12 PM

Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is ‘Perpetuation Of Racial Entitlement’

 

Caricature - Antonin Scalia

Well, it’s a sure bet that Justice Antonin Scalia will not be on the “pro-voting rights” side of the judicial debate…

Think Progress

There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

The comment came as part of a larger riff on a comment Scalia made the last time the landmark voting law was before the justices. Noting the fact that the Voting Rights Act reauthorization passed 98-0 when it was before the Senate in 2006, Scalia claimed four years ago that this unopposed vote actually undermines the law: “The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there.”

That was an unusual comment when it was made, but Scalia’s expansion on it today raises concerns that his suspicion of the Act is rooted much more in racial resentment than in a general distrust of unanimous votes. Scalia noted when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, it passed over 19 dissenters. In subsequent reauthorizations, the number of dissenters diminished, until it passed the Senate without dissent seven years ago. Scalia’s comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists. His inflammatory claim that the Voting Rights Act is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement” came close to the end of a long statement on why he found a landmark law preventing race discrimination in voting to be suspicious.

It should be noted that even one of Scalia’s fellow justices felt the need to call out his remark. Justice Sotomayor asked the attorney challenging the Voting Right Act whether he thought voting rights are a racial entitlement as soon as he took the podium for rebuttal.

A transcript of the oral argument will be available soon, and we will post Scalia’s quote in its full context. We will also post audio of Scalia’s words when they become available.

Here is the transcript.

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· 7:48 AM

How Do You Steal a Dream? Supreme Court hears suit to kill Voting Rights Act

I’m inclined to believe that this Supreme Court (The Rehnquist/Roberts Court) does not want to tarnish it’s legacy further and thus, will reach a just decision on the issue…

Greg Palast

Jim Crow is alive and well — and he has mounted a new attack on the law Martin Luther King dreamed of: the Voting Rights Act.

Today, February 27, the Supreme Court will hear a suit brought by Shelby County, Alabama, which challenges the right of the Department of Justice to review changes in voting procedure. Example: Attempts to cut the number of early voting days, to expunge “illegal alien” voters without any evidence, refusing Spanish-language ballots, have been blocked by the Department of Justice and courts because they have stopped Black and Hispanic citizens casting ballots.

Sixteen states are subject to this “pre-clearance” law, every one with a history of Jim Crow rules such as “literacy” tests — Blacks had to recite the Constitution, Whites “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Dixie moans it’s been picked on unfairly, but the “pre-clearance” states, chosen by an arithmetic formula, include all or parts of the “Confederate states” of California, Arizona, Alaska and New York.

All those above the Mason-Dixon line are on the civil-rights hot-water roster because of a history of hostility to Hispanic citizens. In 2006, for example, the Republican Secretary of State of California rejected 42% of voter registration forms because the names were “unusual” and difficult to type into records! The names, like Chávez and Muhammad, were only “unusual” for Republicans.

New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg is happy to pre-clear his city’s changes with the Justice Department and has told that to the Court. But once again, as Dr. King said in his Dream speech, in Alabama, the “Governor has his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification” — to nullify the 15th Amendment’s right to vote and to interpose himself between federal law and the enforcement of this basic American right.

And the Southland? In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter rolls, labeling them “felons” when their only crime was VWB: Voting While Black. All — every one — were innocent. And again, in 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott targeted 180,000 voters, mostly Latinos, as illegal “alien” voters. The Governor, when challenged by the Justice Department, cut the “alien” list to 198 but in the end, could only produce evidence against one.
If it were not for Section 5, the pre-clearance law, the purges, gerrymandering and other racially bent trickery rampant in Florida, Arizona (with its profiling and harassment of Hispanic voters) and Alaska with its bias against Native Americans would be so much worse. Without review — and the threat of review — Americans would once again lose the rights that the Constitution promises, won with the blood of our Fathers.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the Jim Crow and José Crow tactics that create long lines of voters of color in Ohio and other states.

Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan signed massive expansions of the Voting Rights Act, tripling its reach. It is time to extend the law’s protections again — to Ohio, to Wisconsin, to everyone.

When every American is protected by the Voting Rights Act review of voting changes, then all of us may be secure that our votes will not be nullified by politicians abusing the voting system to seize office through tactics racist in effect, if not intent.

A half century ago this year, Dr. Martin Luther King shared his dream with America:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

“We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

King’s dream is the American Dream — which no Court should take away. It is a mighty stream which must touch all citizens in every state.

Without “pre-clearance,” the Voting Rights Act is an empty promise — with purged, blocked and intimidated voters having to protest after an election to the very officials elected by the vote thievery that put them in office.

If this Supreme Court removes “pre-clearance” Section 5 on the grounds that it does not apply to every state, then the solution is simple and just: apply pre-clearance to every state.  Every American deserves a review by Justice of laws which tell us who can vote — and who can’t.

As King admonished us, we must not be satisfied when we see Black folk, a half century after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, stand in line for six hours to vote whether in Miami or in Cleveland.

We petition the Court and Congress to let freedom ring.

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January 29, 2013 · 12:15 AM

Virginia Electoral College Rigging Scheme Would Further Disenfranchise Minority Voters

History will not look kindly upon these types of proposals nor the people who support them…

Think Progress

As the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee prepares to take up a bill to rig bill the state’s electoral college vote, Democrats and even Republicans are distancing themselves from the effort, calling it “a bad idea,” “skewing,” and a “partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters.” A Think Progress analysis of Virginia voter demographics reveals another major flaw with the proposal: it would significantly dilute the influence of minority voters.

The 2012 Virginia Congressional maps, authored by Delegate Robert Bell (R) based on the 2010 U.S. Census, divided the state’s estimated 8,001,024 people into 11 Congressional districts. Though the state population is more than 20 percent African American — and more than 31 percent non-white — just one Congressional district contains a majority of non-white voters (the Third District, which is majority African American). Though white non-Hispanic Virginians makeup just 68.6 percent of the population, they comprise at least 58 percent of the population in all of the other 10 districts.

While many of the electoral college-rigging schemes being pushed by Republicans nationally would still allocate two electors based on the popular winner in the state — the Virginia plan would not even do that. State Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s Senate Bill 723 would allocate 11 electors based on the popular winner in each of the House districts and two to whichever candidate won the majority of those gerrymandered House districts.

So, with more than one-fifth of the population, African American Virginians would go from having about 20 percent of the say to just controlling one-thirteenth of the state’s electoral votes under the Carrico plan. And racial minority voters overall would go from having about 31 percent of the say, to also controlling just 7.7 percent of the state’s electors.

And while African American voters would of course have some say in districts where they do not make up a majority, more than a quarter of them them are packed into the 3rd district, meaning the remaining 73 percent would be in districts where they comprised, on average, just about 16 percent of the population. This would be a significant retrogression of influence for minority voters. Given Virginia’s history of racial discrimination and the fact that much of the state remains a Voting Rights Act covered jurisdiction, this maneuver might well be not just anti-democratic, but also illegal.

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November 9, 2012 · 5:15 PM

Court to Review Key Part of Voting Rights Act

This case is to be heard in the winter of 2013 or the spring of that year.   Given the voter suppression efforts in the recent Presidential election, in my opinion, the plaintiff’s justification and argument for the upcoming lawsuit should be rendered moot.

The Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court said Friday it would review whether a core provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act remains constitutional, signaling that the justices may be ready to end Washington’s aggressive supervision of locations that historically discriminated against minority voters.

The case comes from Shelby County, Ala., which maintains that the official racism that prompted the Voting Rights Act was eradicated long ago and can no longer justify what officials there consider intrusive federal oversight of local affairs.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court declined to invalidate the challenged provision, known as Section 5, which requires state and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to obtain approval from the Justice Department or a federal judge before changing election procedures. But the 8-1 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, indicated that unless Congress amended Section 5 or found stronger ground to justify it, the provision might not survive future Supreme Court review.

The 2009 opinion, in the case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, was widely viewed as a compromise between the court’s conservatives, who consider Section 5 an intrusion on state sovereignty, and its liberals, who credit the provision with ending widespread voter suppression.

A bipartisan vote had reauthorized Section 5 in 2006, but since then Congress has shown little interest in revisiting the legislation. Views of Section 5 now divide generally along party lines, with Democrats in support and Republicans critical.

After the 2009 decision, opponents of Section 5 wasted little time developing a follow-up lawsuit that sought to press the high court’s discomfort with the provision.

The 14th and 15th amendments, ratified soon after the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War, authorize Congress to protect individuals from mistreatment by state governments. The latter amendment specifically empowers Washington to prevent states from interfering with voting rights “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

Congress made little use of that authority until 1965, when police in Selma, Ala., attacked voting-rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge with billy clubs and tear gas. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, shocked much of the nation and inspired Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 was designed to stymie state and local authorities that routinely devised new impediments to minority voters as soon as an existing one was challenged.

The provision aimed particularly at Southern states with long histories of disenfranchising African-Americans. In 1975, Congress expanded the criteria to include language minorities, a formula that has remained largely unchanged through successive reauthorizations, the last in 2006 for 25 years. The legislation permits jurisdictions with a clean record of at least 10 years to seek exemption from Section 5, and increasing numbers of local governments have obtained these so-called bailouts.

Shelby County and other critics argue that it and other covered jurisdictions have made extraordinary progress since the 1960s and ’70s, and that the blatant discrimination they once enforced is long past. Minorities vote in numbers comparable to whites, they argue, and African-Americans now occupy many elective offices—including Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), who was one of the nonviolent marchers beaten on Bloody Sunday.

Critics say the Justice Department has used its preclearance powers too aggressively, blocking, for instance, several voter-identification laws.

Lower courts, however, rejected Shelby County’s arguments, finding that Congress relied on a voluminous record of evidence in reauthorizing Section 5 powers. The Justice Department argues that while Congress may not have unlimited authority to intervene in state election laws, Section 5 falls well within its constitutional authority to protect the right to vote.

The case is likely to be heard in winter or spring, with a decision by July.

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October 1, 2012 · 3:49 AM

3 cases to watch in the Supreme Court’s new term

During a new term that begins on Oct. 1, the Supreme Court could decide to accept challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, which both define marriage as between a man and woman.

“Up With Chris Hayes” touched on the topic (actually it was quite extensive) of The Supreme Court convening by statute on the “First Monday in October” and what cases they might be hearing.

He also spoke on the importance of a balanced Court (even tilted to the left if Obama is re-elected and has the chance to choose two Justices to replace two of the four aging Justices on the bench currently.  Conversely, even more conservative Justices could be appointed to the Court if Romney is elected.

The Week talks about upcoming hot-button issues before The Court in the coming nine months…

The Week

The high court is taking on hot-button issues such as affirmative action, and may also hand down rulings on gay marriage and civil rights protections

When the Supreme Court begins its 2012-13 term on Monday, few expect its docket to match the drama that accompanied its ruling on ObamaCare in June, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals to uphold President Obama’s signature domestic achievement — a day that will undoubtedly live in infamy among conservatives. However, the court still has its fair share of politically divisive cases, and court watchers say it’s probable that the justices will accept cases touching on gay marriage and voting rights. Here, three cases to watch in the court’s upcoming term:

1. Affirmative action could come to an end
On Oct. 10 the court will hear oral arguments for Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which many expect to bring about the court’s most significant ruling on affirmative action in at least a decade. At issue is whether the University of Texas is discriminating against white students by taking race into consideration during the application process. The case had been brought by Abigail Fisher, a white student whose application was denied. “There were people in my class with lower grades, who weren’t in all the activities I was in, who were accepted into UT,” she tells NBC News. “And the only difference between us was the color of our skin.” The Supreme Court last upheld affirmative action in universities in 2003, but has grown more conservative since then with the addition of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Many expect the court to strike down affirmative action programs altogether. “I don’t think anyone thinks affirmative action is long for this world,” says Pamela Harris, a former Obama administration official.

2. The Voting Rights Act could be scaled back
The court is “very likely to hear a constitutional challenge to a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” which outlawed voter discrimination, says David Cole at The New York Review of Books. The provision in question is Section 5, which requires certain states and localities with a history of racism to get federal clearance before changing voting procedures. Opponents say the provision is outdated, arguing that the “insidious and pervasive evil” of racism in the Deep South no longer exists. The provision’s supporters point to laws recently passed by GOP-controlled legislatures that allegedly suppress minority voting. If the Supreme Court decides to take the case, the conservative wing will have to decide how far it wants to go in affirming a “colorblind” vision of society, in which any policy based on racial considerations, including affirmative action, would be a violation of the “Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law,” says Cole.

3. A ruling on same-sex marriage is likely imminent
By the end of the term, the court “will almost certainly have decided whether gays and lesbians can marry in California,” and whether the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is constitutional, says Bob Egelko at The San Francisco Chronicle. The court could decide as soon as Monday to accept challenges to DOMA and California’s Proposition 8, both of which define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Republican supporters say striking down either DOMA or Prop 8 would be the height of judicial activism, robbing Congress and state voters from implementing their will. Such a decision would “ignite a decades-long firestorm that will make Roe v. Wade‘s disruption of American politics appear minor by comparison,” says Ed Whelan at The National Review. Supporters of same-sex marriage say that DOMA and Prop 8 are clearly discriminatory, though some would prefer to legalize gay marriage through legislation.

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