National: Voting Rights Act Section 5 challenges reach Supreme Court | SCOTUSblog
Attorneys for challengers to the constitutionality of the 1965 voting rights law’s key provision for federal regulation of state and local election laws urged the Supreme Court on Friday to settle the issue in the next Term, starting October 1. One new case arrived from the town of Kinston in North Carolina and a second came from Shelby County in Alabama. The D.C. Circuit Court has upheld the provision at issue — Section 5 — although the Supreme Court itself three years ago raised significant questions about its validity. The Kinston case reached the Court this morning. The petition is here, and the appendix (a large file) is here. The Shelby County case was filed in early afternoon; the petition ishere, and the D.C. Circuit Court ruling in that case is here. Not only has the time come to examine the constitutional questions the Court has raised, the Kinston petition argued, but the Justice Department’s “overzealous manner” of enforcement of Section 5 has put heavy new burdens on state and local governments covered by that provision. The Shelby County petition argued that the renewed law puts states into “federal receivership,” raising “fundamental questions of state sovereignty,” while denying equality only to designated states – predominantly in the South. Shelby County also assailed the Justice Department’s “needlessly aggressive exercise” of its veto powers over state and local election laws.