In a 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court struck down one section of the Voting Rights Act and effectively neutered another, striking a blow for federalism and liberty in the states. The ruling, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas – the court’s only black Justice and a child of the Jim Crow South – ruled unconstitutional the formula for determining which states must submit voting law changes to the Justice Department for pre-approval.
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In striking down this legislative formula, the court effectively diminished Section 5 of the act, the controversial and recently-abused provision granting the Justice Department the power to pre-approve voting law changes in most southern states.
In its ruling, the court wrote that Congress could no longer subject states to federal pre-approval (known as preclearance in legal parlance) because the formula for doing so hadn’t been updated since 1965.
“In 1965, 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,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “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.”
Indeed. The Voting Rights Act operated on the assumption that Bull Connor – the late commissioner of Public Safety of Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement – was still turning his fire hoses and police dogs on black Americans, subjecting most of the old Jim Crow states to an absurd standard of pre-approval for voting changes that are entirely legal everywhere else.
Instead of combating the very real racism the act was written to stop, the law has been warped into a bludgeon used to club Republican-led legislatures that move things too far right for the ideologues in the Justice Department.
Under Attorney General H. Holder Jr., the law has been used to stop several states from adopting photo ID requirements, despite the fact that the Supreme Court itself has upheld such laws as constitutional. Texas, South Carolina, and strangely Virginia were all blocked by Justice from implementing voter ID laws despite a similar law in Georgia having been in effect for two election cycles that showed increased minority turnout.
In Texas and South Carolina, Mr. Holder’s department ruled that the laws would somehow unfairly target minorities, despite the fact that they were devoid of racial language and merely required all citizens – regardless of race – to present valid photo ID to vote.
How can it possibly be racist to mandate that all citizens prove their identities – present a small plastic card with their name and photo on it – in order to vote?
Virginia’s case is even more absurd. Signed into law this year, the measure has been awaiting federal approval despite the fact that the state twice voted for Barack Obama. What an odd thing to do for a state the government assumes is unfailingly racist.
Therein lies the absurdity of the entire Voting Rights Act and its application by the government. As Chief Justice Roberts said, “no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the nation at that time.”
Instead, what Attorney General Holder and the lawyers at Justice have been engaged in is nothing more than the politically-motivated abuse of an outdated law, using charges of racist discrimination to give cover to federal attempts to stop conservative states from strengthening voter requirements.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling was a crippling blow to those efforts.
Matt Cover is Content Editor at Rare. Follow him on Twitter: @MattCover