Federal court hears Texas challenge to Voting Rights Act

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Federal court hears Texas challenge to Voting Rights Act

July 9, 2012 01:43:15 pm

[JURIST] Arguments began in the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Monday in a lawsuit brought by Texas against the US government regarding a voter identification law that was blocked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) [materials]. State of Texas v. Holder concerns a 2011 Texas law [SB 14 materials] requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls, blocked in March by the DOJ [JURIST report] on the grounds that the law will disproportionately affect minority voters. Existing Texas law requires voters to show a non-photo voter registration card [Reuters report] or an acceptable alternative, such as a driver’s license or a utility bill. The Section 5 [DOJ backgrounder] “preclearance” rules of the VRA require covered jurisdictions to clear changes in voting districts, polling places and other electoral processes with the DOJ or federal courts. Section 5 relies heavily on patterns of past discrimination to determine which state, county and local governments must obtain preclearance for election changes. The VRA was enacted to put an end to the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters that ran rampant in Southern districts in the 1960s. The Texas lawsuit, which has 25 hours of argument scheduled over five days, is one of dozens of VRA challenges over the past two years, each largely aimed not just at defending specific voting changes but also at getting the Supreme Court to strike down the VRA, especially Section 5. According to a public DOJ list [materials], currently nine whole states, including Texas, and many individual counties and municipalities are Section 5 Covered Jurisdictions. The Senate last voted extend the VRA [NYT report] in 2006 by an overwhelming 98-0 vote.

There are now more than 30 US states [NCSL backgrounder] that require voters to present some form of ID at the polls, including 17 states that have passed laws that require a photo ID. Last month Chris Elmendorf of the University of California, Davis School of Law, wrote [JURIST op-ed] that recent statistical findings may contribute to courts declaring Section 5 of the VRA to be unconstitutional, while simultaneously strengthening the provisions of Section 2. Unlike the preclearance rules of Section 5, Section 2 nationally prohibits election laws that “result” in minority voters having “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” In May Elmendorf wrote [JURIST op-ed] that the “purpose” rather than the “effects” prong of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act may offer a better basis to challenge recent state regulations of the voting process. The DOJ relied on the “effects” prong of Section 5, which requires that a new law not have a retrogressive effect on racial minorities’ political participation, in denying preclearance to Texas in March, and to South Carolina [JURIST report] in December.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.