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Supreme Court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act
The US Supreme Court sounded a death knell for a key piece of civil rights legislation on Tuesday, when it declared that a central part of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional.
The act, passed in 1965, was designed to stop states with a history of racism from discriminating against voters. With the court dividing along ideological lines, five of the justices ruled that the provisions of the act bore “no logical relation” to the situation in the US in 2013.
Legal analysts called the ruling “absolutely historic”. President Barack Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” with the decision and civil rights groups decried it as a “huge setback”.
The Supreme Court was considering a challenge to the act from the mostly white Alabama county of Shelby. The law was brought in at time when some southern jurisdictions were trying to stop African-American people from voting, either by blatantly prohibiting them or by imposing requirements such as passing a literacy test.
It was repeatedly used during last year’s elections to block voter ID requirements introduced by some Republican-led states.
But Shelby County argued that the law was no longer relevant, and on Tuesday the majority of the court agreed.
“In 1965, the states could be divided into those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout and those without those characteristics,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the opinion for the majority.
“Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were,” Mr Roberts wrote.
The four liberal justices dissented.
The Voting Rights Act, now almost 50 years old, was signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson. Section 5 of the act set out a “preclearance” requirement under which the federal government had to approve any changes to states’ voting rules and procedures, and even where they placed polling stations.
Section 4 of the act contained the formula used to determine which state and local governments had to comply with Section 5’s pre-approval requirement.
The law was supposed to last for only five years, but Congress has extended it several times. The most recent occasion was in 2006, when George W Bush, the Republican president at the time, renewed it for another 25 years after both chambers voted overwhelmingly in favour: 98-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House.
The law currently covers nine states including Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.
Although the Supreme Court did not invalidate Section 5 of the act on Tuesday, it rendered the section toothless by overturning Section 4, essentially forcing Congress to enact a new statute to determine who should be covered by it. That would be an almost-impossible task for this bitterly divided Congress, analysts at Scotusblog said.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the dissenters, said the court was wrong to contradict Congress when it had given such a resounding stamp of approval to the law only seven years ago.
“After exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process, Congress reauthorised the VRA, including the coverage provision, with overwhelming bipartisan support,” she wrote. “In my judgment, the court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’s decision.”
Mr Obama said that the decision, while a “setback”, would not stop efforts to end voting discrimination.
“I am calling on Congress to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls,” he said in a statement. “My administration will continue to do everything in its power to ensure a fair and equal voting process.”
Civil rights groups were also dismayed.
The NAACP, which fights for African-American rights, tweeted: “Today will be remembered as a step backwards in the march towards equal rights.”
Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, which supported the federal government in the case, said that the conservative-leaning court had shown again that it would not defer to Congress.
“This ruling is an extreme act of judicial activism and Congress must respond in a strong bipartisan manner with new legislation to safeguard the franchise,” he said.
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The situation in Texas
Texas immediately vowed to activate its controversial voter ID law that was blocked by the federal government last year, Anna Fifield writes.
“Today’s ruling ensures that Texas is no longer one of just a few states that must seek approval from the federal government before its election laws can take effect,” Greg Abbott, the state’s attorney-general, said.
Texas’s Republican-led legislature last year passed a law requiring people voting in person to show certain forms of government-issued identification instead of the usual voter registration cards.
Supporters said it would stamp out voter fraud, but critics said it was aimed at keeping out Hispanics and poorer voters who are less likely to have drivers’ licences, as well as groups more likely to vote Democrat.
A federal court in Washington ruled that a new Texas voter identification law is discriminatory and prohibited it from taking effect before the November presidential and congressional elections.
A group of African-American conservatives, Project 21, also welcomed the ruling. “This ruling recognises that people can change, that America has changed and that a law that presupposes guilt must be reformed to reflect the beauty of human nature.” said Cherylyn Harley LeBon of Project 21. |
