The Supreme Court has struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The act empowered the Justice Department with a veto (pre-clearance) over changes to voting laws in a handful of states and some localities with a history of discrimination in voting. This act was most recently renewed by Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush in 2006:
…every single Senate Republican and the vast majority of House Republicans voted for it. But today SCOTUS asked Congress to take another crack at regulations that would backstop states or counties if they passed laws that discriminated against the voting rights of any racial group.
So…that’s one thing. Superficially, it seems there is wide support in Congress to put into place some type of enforcement power in the Voting Rights Act. In theory, it should be easy for this Congress—even with a powerful obstructionist agenda motivating Republicans—to pass a new version of the law. But “theory” cannot really be trusted with the current crop of right wing Congressional nut jobbers. But…if they did rewrite the law, they could well improve it.
How can it be improved? Besides “updating” the outdated formula specified in Section 4, they could broaden the law to all states. Over the last decade, we have seen an alarming increase in state laws that disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, the poor, and non-native English speakers. Remember Karl Rove? The man was either delusionally paranoid or politically cunning in pushing the meme (with a big assist from intellectual fraudsters Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund) of widespread “voter fraud!” In reality, voter fraud is extremely rare, rarely organized, and in the rare instances it is organized, it’s usually committed by Republicans. (Okay…I made up the last “fact”…in reality, we cannot know because the sample sizes are tiny).
The result of Rove’s “fraudulent” fantasies is that Republican groups developed “model laws” that, if enacted, would disenfranchise minorities disproportionately. These model laws have been introduced in a number of non-Voting Rights Act states controlled by Republicans. Essentially, we are in a new era where many states not covered by the Voting Rights Act are at risk of disenfranchising minority voters—state like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The solution is for Congress to put some teeth into the 15th amendment and pass a Voting Rights Act that covers all states equally and significantly broadens protections for disadvantaged persons.
Yeah…whatever…that’s all pie-in-the-sky. Within hours of the SCOTUS decision several states have indicated they would go forward with their blocked or stalled voter ID laws. This does not mean they”ll succeed—after all, the 15th amendment is pretty fucking clear! But it means the Justice Department must now sue states to get the laws blocked. That process takes substantially more effort, so it is an imperfect solution.
In the long run, this court decision may well hurt Republicans. By further disenfranchising minorities, Republicans will fail at “winning the hearts and minds” and VOTES of minority and disadvantaged voters. It is a medium-term demographic disaster for Republicans. Related to that, Joshua Green points out:
Many of the GOP’s current problems stem from the fact that it is overly beholden to its white, Southern base at a time when the country is rapidly becoming more racially diverse. In order to expand its base of power beyond the House of Representatives, the GOP needs to expand its appeal to minority voters. As the ongoing battle over immigration reform demonstrates, that process is going poorly and looks like it will be very difficult.
The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act will […] intensify the Southern captivity of the GOP, thereby making it harder for Republicans to broaden their appeal and win back the White House.
That is…we have years of “Republican amateur hours” to look forward to in the House.
The final implications I want to discuss are the Constitutional ones. A reading of the ruling turns up very few specifics on why the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional:
…[I]n Shelby, five conservative justices gutted the Voting Rights Act anyway, deeming it inconsistent with Constitution because, well, they said so. These jurists said the same law used to be perfectly constitutional, but somehow morphed into being unconstitutional without anyone noticing, and without violating anything specific in the Constitution itself.
That leads to the question, “When did it become unconstitutional to subject states to pre-clearance??
Oh wait…That was Scalia’s question about same-sex marriage…
If time can morph things from constitutional to unconstitutional because “things change” couldn’t today’s ruling have implications for, say, the first amendment. I mean, they didn’t have the intertubes, high speed laser printers, Twitter, wireless phones, or even electronically-enhanced megaphones when the First Amendment was ratified. “Free speech” was more akin to a lowly musket compared to the GG-95 PDW that is today’s high powered speech technology.
Hmm. Speaking of muskets and modern personal defense weapons…shouldn’t this ruling provide “ammunition” (doh!) for those who argue that the rights conveyed in the second amendment no longer apply because of technological change in weapons technology?
Holy shit…I think the conservative Justices have given us a living Constitution! Fucking judicial activists!
Great post, Darryl.
Really amazing that it was declared unconstitutional without specifying which part of the constitution.
Interesting opinion piece from ScotusBlog:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013.....sequences/
…just wrote precedent to overturn DOMA. “The [Defense of Marriage Act] imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
…just wrote precedent to overturn the USA Patriot [sic] Act. “The [USA Patriot Act] imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
At the same time, [terrorism] still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of [civil liberties], continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, “the [USA PATRIOT] Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
…yadda-yadda-yadda
At the same time, [heterosexual marriages] still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of [LGBT couples], continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, “the [Defense of Marriage] Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
At the same time, [corporations] still exist; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of [individual citizens], continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, “the [Citizens United Ruling] imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
You’ve got a point, Darryl. The GOP is a national organization and has spread its agenda to all 50 states. http://tinyurl.com/o63uv9p It’s time to update the VRA in keeping with new realities.
Chaos erupted in the Texas state senate last night after the state’s GOP Lt. Governor tried to cut off a Democratic filibuster of a GOP anti-abortion bill before midnight and then chanting by protesters drowned out a roll call vote on the bill, and Democrats now claim the bill didn’t pass before the midnight session deadline.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....-pass?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s not hard to visualize how this will play out. http://tinyurl.com/qbmctza
3) After today, I don’t know how the DOMA decision will go down. We’ll find out soon. With Prop8, I can’t help but thinking about the late Dr. Sally Ride, and the secret ahe kept that came out in the obituary last year, when among the survived by, it was mentioned her life partner. Her sister, also a Lesbian, but more open about it, said Sally just was a private peraon. If it were not for Prop8 and DOMA, they could have been married if they wanted.
Here’s what that liberal-biased media outlet, Fox News, says happened in Texas last night:
“Reporters and Democrats saw the voting begin after a midnight legislative deadline Tuesday, but Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said it began just before.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....z2XIqe0uQ6
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I really don’t know how the Texas system works on this sort of thing. Can the bill’s validity be challenged in court, or does the lying lieutenant governor get the final word? It seems to me that if Fox News says the GOP missed the midnight voting deadline, then the GOP probably did miss the midnight voting deadline — that’s what lawyers call a “statement against interest” (which, technically, is an exception to the hearsay rule; but its rationale applies equally well here) — i.e., something the speaker wouldn’t be likely to say if it wasn’t true, because saying it is against the speaker’s self-interest. and therefore it should be considered as reliable evidence of the truth.
Being a Democratic legislator in Texas has gotta be a tough gig. We owe those brave folks our respect.
@ 12. Roger Rabbit
Does anybody really know what time it is?:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com.....ter/66583/
Someone!–Call the NSA!!
13)Good point, they have had it tough since the mid-decade gerrymandering 10 years ago, One thing that the state senator has done, is show what a talking fillibuster is all about.
@14 Yes. The whole world knew what time it was, and that’s why the lying Republican lieutenant governor had to back down. This lie proved to be a bridge too far. The lying Republicans even tried to reset the computers’ timeclocks, but it was too late, by then the screen captures had been made and the world knew they were lying. This time, the Republican liars went down in flames because people know how to read a clock.
@16 Of course the snarky response is that with the way the republican are funding education in texas, being able to tell time won’t be an issue for much longer.
@17 Maybe not in Texass, but they don’t control literacy in the other states.