Editorials: The Other Crucial Civil Rights Case the Supreme Court Will be Ruling On | ProPublica

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear two cases challenging state and federal laws which prevent the legal union between same-sex couples. But it’s not the only significant civil rights case the Court has decided to take up this term. Last month, the Supreme Court said it will consider the constitutionality of a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the hallmark legislation from the Civil Rights era that has come under increased challenge.

Editorials: Is The Voting Rights Act Outdated? | NPR

For more than four decades, the Voting Rights Act never lost a court decision as it cut a path for minorities’ increased participation in elections. But the most effective civil rights law in U.S. history faces its most serious challenge as the Supreme Court prepares to re-examine its constitutionality. Why now? Some say it’s because of the law’s own success. The plaintiff in the case blames Congress for failing to amend part of the legislation to reflect changing times.

National: Behind U.S. race cases, a little-known recruiter | Reuters

Sometime in the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide two cases that could fundamentally reshape the rules of race in America. In one, a young white woman named Abigail Fisher is suing the University of Texas over affirmative action in college admissions. In the other, an Alabama county wants to strike down a law that requires certain states to get federal permission to change election rules. If they win, the names Fisher and Shelby County, Ala., will instantly become synonymous with the elimination of longstanding minority-student preferences and voting-rights laws. But behind them is another name, belonging to a person who is neither a party to the litigation nor even a lawyer, but who is the reason these cases ever came to be. He is Edward Blum, a little-known 60-year-old former stockbroker.

Editorials: Defending the Voting Rights Act From Its Conservative Critics | Huffington Post

In a condescending but shallow response to a Huffington Post piece written last week by my colleague Emily Phelps and me, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto accuses us of appealing to “emotion” and wallowing in “nostalgia for the heroism of the civil rights movement half a century ago.” Our piece mourned the recent death of Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights hero who was repeatedly “challenged, jailed and beaten” in his efforts to register black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s, while making broader points about the continued need for the law — the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — that represents one of the most important accomplishments produced by the struggles of Mr. Guyot and his civil rights movement compatriots.

Virginia: Voter fraud gets another spin | Roanoke.com

Del. Mark Cole is worried about voter fraud in Virginia. Not that any evidence of widespread fraud has come to light in the commonwealth. But, well, it could be happening, Cole figures. So he’s going to double back on his effort this year to tighten up. Cole, a Republican from Spotsylvania County, has prefiled a bill for the 2013 General Assembly session, HB 1337, that would remove several forms of identification voters can present at the polls when they go to cast their ballots. He wants to strike current utility bills, bank statements, government checks or pay stubs that show a person’s address — all added this year to help win Justice Department approval when the Republican-dominated assembly passed, and Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell signed, legislation making it significantly harder for Virginians to vote without proper ID.

Florida: Several Florida Republicans Admit Voter Fraud was Subterfuge for GOP Victory | Politicus USA

Leaks are a part of the GOP’s slow implosion. So it’s not a surprise that current and former Republicans are admitting the real purpose of the voter ID and early voting laws. The Florida law that cut early voting was an intentional tactic to hand Florida to the GOP by inhibiting Democratic turnout, former GOP officials and “current GOP consultants” told the Palm Beach Post. Former GOP Florida Chairman called the voter ID laws a “marketing ploy” and Crist said he was approached about changing the laws regarding early voting. Two veteran GOP campaign consultants echoed Crist and Greer’s claims.

Editorials: Do We Still Need the Voting Rights Act? | The Daily Beast

Sometime early next year, the Supreme Court is expected to invalidate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the most powerful and effective tool that the United States government has to combat discriminatory election practices. The expected decision, in a case called Shelby County v. Holder is not being met with shock or outrage by legal academics, but rather a dismayed shrug. Section 5 is one of the most unique civil-rights laws because it does not apply to most of the country. Instead, with a handful of exceptions like Alaska, Arizona and part of New York City, it applies only to states in the South—to be specific: all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, most of Virginia, part of North Carolina and a handful of counties of Florida. In these covered areas, every decision relating to elections is subject to approval, or preclearance, by the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. And every decision means every single decision.

Editorials: Voting Rights Act and the South on trial | CNN.com

How much has the South changed? That’s the question at the heart of one of the most important cases the Supreme Court will take up this year. The case weighs the fate of one of the most important laws in American history: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A century after the Civil War, Congress created that law to give African Americans the right to vote, not just on paper, but in fact. The key provision was Section 5, which decreed that jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, mostly in the South, had to get Justice Department approval before they changed any aspect of their voting rules, right down to the location of polling places. There is little doubt that, in the years immediately after 1965, the Voting Rights Act achieved a revolution in voting rights for African-Americans in the South. In subsequent years, Congress has reauthorized the law several times, most recently in 2006.

Editorials: In Texas let’s be thankful for Section 5 | San Antonio Express-News

Let’s talk turkey. In San Antonio, Texas, I’m thankful for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. I know. If it comes up at my Thanksgiving table, my answer to the traditional question — what are you thankful for — will surely get me some puzzled looks. There is a good chance, however, I’ll be unable to give the same answer next year. Section 5 requires certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination — Texas among them — to get preclearance for any changes to voting or election laws. The burden is on those jurisdictions to prove they did not act with the intent to discriminate. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to look at claims that this section is anachronistic, though Texas has just demonstrated that attempted discrimination against minority voters is as trendy as breakfast tacos.

Arizona: Supreme Court relief sought on Voting Rights Act | Arizona Republic

Three days after the Nov. 6 election, when many Americans happily made voting a memory, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that some legal experts say could lead to the biggest shake-up in voting law in nearly a half-century. The court will weigh a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, a law that has changed little over 40 years and for decades has placed Arizona and eight other states under federal scrutiny for suspected discrimination. Supporters of the lawsuit, which involves an Alabama county, say their efforts could once again put every state and locality on equal legal footing and evaluate anew whether minorities are treated unfairly anywhere.

Editorials: Voting rights law is not a simple issue | Columbus Ledger Enquirer

Does a federal law that applies to some states but not to others, even to some counties but not to others, make constitutional sense? That’s the question the country has been debating, sometimes bitterly, across political, geographical and racial lines for almost half a century now. The law in question is of course the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which made the most fundamental right of citizenship a reality for millions of Americans, mostly black and mostly in the South, to whom it had been long denied through the slimiest and most cynical kinds of political chicanery.

Editorials: Does Obama’s Re-election Doom the Voting Rights Act? | NYTimes.com

Does the re-election of the first black president mean the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unnecessary and perhaps unconstitutional? The Supreme Court’s decision last week to consider a constitutional challenge to a key section of the act suggests that a perverse outcome of the 2012 campaign may be that President Obama’s victory spells doom for the civil rights law most responsible for African-American enfranchisement. The central question in the constitutional debate is whether times have changed enough in the nearly five decades since the act’s passage to suggest that the law has outlived its usefulness. The unprecedented flexing of racial minorities’ political muscle on Nov. 6 does make it clear how much times have changed. But a campaign marred by charges of voter suppression and Election Day mishaps also makes the need for federal protection of voting rights clearer than ever.

Editorials: Why the Voting Rights Act Likely Won’t Survive Supreme Court Review | The Nation

While the United States was grappling with whether or not to re-elect its first African-American president, Louisiana was wrestling over whether to appoint its first African-American Chief Justice for its State Supreme Court. Bernette Johnson’s destiny was temporarily deferred when some of her fellow Supreme Court Justices and Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged her right to succeed retiring Chief Justice Catherine Kimball. Louisiana law dictates that the justice who’s served the longest on the bench takes over as chief when the sitting one leaves. Johnson, the court’s only black judge, took the bench in October of 1994, while Justice Jeffrey Victory came on in January 1995. But Victory declared he had seniority, arguing Johnson’s first few years on the bench didn’t count because it was a special appointment made by a federal consent decree. Indeed, Johnson’s Supreme Court seat was made available because the electoral districts at the time were drawn so that no black Louisianians would ever have the kind of plurality needed to elect a candidate who represented their interests. When you’re black and live in a Southern state that venerates its Confederate heritage while leading the world in locking people up, voting for a judge kinda matters to you.

Editorials: Changing Times | Linda Greenhouse/NYTimes.com

When people talked during the presidential campaign about the potential impact of the election on the Supreme Court, most meant the impact on the court’s membership: whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would get to fill any vacancies during the next four years. The vote on Nov. 6 settled that question, obviously, but it also raised another tantalizing one: what impact will other developments during this election season, beyond the presidential vote itself, have on the nine justices? I have two developments in mind: the vote in four states in support of same-sex marriage, and the run-up to Election Day that saw both Democrats and federal judges pushing back against Republican strategies devised to selectively minimize voter turnout. Both are directly relevant to cases on the Supreme Court’s current docket, and it’s worth at least considering whether either or both are potential game changers. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time in Supreme Court history that timing turned out to be everything.

Editorials: Minority voters in Texas still need to be protected | Star Telegram

Some experts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement Friday that it will hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 means this pivotal part of the 47-year-old law is dead and the court is finally ready to bury it. Some members of the court have complained about Section 5 in more than one case since Congress last renewed the VRA in 2006. Section 5 requires some states — the key is some, not all — to get permission, or “pre-clearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing their election laws. The affected states, including Texas, are those determined under the act to have a history of discriminating against minority voters. Most are in the South.

Alaska: Natives, tribal groups ask to intervene in Alaska’s challenge of Voting Rights Act | Alaska Dispatch

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) announced that four individuals and four Alaska Native tribal governments asked on Tuesday to join with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in a Washington D.C. federal court to defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act as challenged by the state of Alaska in the case Alaska v. Holder. Both the individuals and groups will be represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACL) and NARF. Alaska is one of only a few U.S. states that must abide by Section IV and Section V of the Voting Rights Act. Section IV requires that Alaska provide information on all stages of the voting process statewide in all Native languages. Section V asks that the state show that any changes made to the election process will not negatively effect, either unintentionally or intentionally, minority voters.

National: Supreme Court to Revisit Voting Rights Act | NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take a fresh look at the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the signature legacies of the civil rights movement. Three years ago, the court signaled that part of the law may no longer be needed, and the law’s challengers said the re-election of the nation’s first black president is proof that the nation has moved beyond the racial divisions that gave rise to efforts to protect the integrity of elections in the South. The law “is stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp,” said Edward P. Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, a small legal foundation that helped organize the suit. Civil rights leaders, on the other hand, pointed to the role the law played in the recent election, with courts relying on it to block voter identification requirements and cutbacks on early voting.

Editorials: Alabama, Texas voting rights cases keep political storms churning | Fort Worth Star Telegram

It might seem a stretch for Texas’ top elected officials to be intensely interested in such minutiae as the planning commission’s jurisdiction and voting boundaries in Shelby County, population almost 200,000, in the middle of Alabama. But a lawsuit that Shelby County has taken to the U.S. Supreme Court could determine Texas’ flexibility under the federal Voting Rights Act. And Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is aggressively cheering on Shelby County’s claim that a key part of the 1965 law is an unconstitutional imposition on states’ sovereignty.

National: High court weighs new look at voting rights law | Businessweek

Three years ago, the Supreme Court warned there could be constitutional problems with a landmark civil rights law that has opened voting booths to millions of African-Americans. Now, opponents of a key part of the Voting Rights Act are asking the high court to finish off that provision. The basic question is whether state and local governments that once boasted of their racial discrimination still can be forced in the 21st century to get federal permission before making changes in the way they hold elections.

National: Voting Rights Act: Supreme Court Weighs New Look At Law | Huffington Post

Three years ago, the Supreme Court warned there could be constitutional problems with a landmark civil rights law that has opened voting booths to millions of African-Americans. Now, opponents of a key part of the Voting Rights Act are asking the high court to finish off that provision. The basic question is whether state and local governments that once boasted of their racial discrimination still can be forced in the 21st century to get federal permission before making changes in the way they hold elections.

Minnesota: Nations racial legacy shapes Minnesotas voter ID debate | StarTribune.com

Josie Johnson gathered petitions against the Texas poll tax as a teenager in 1945 and worked for the right to vote in Mississippi in the violent “Freedom Summer” two decades later. Now, nearly a half-century after the Voting Rights Act was enacted to open the polls to all, the 82-year-old civil rights warrior is bringing those sad tales home to fight Minnesotas proposed photo ID requirement for voting.”Our ancestors died, young children were punished, homes were bombed, churches were bombed,” Johnson, the first black regent at the University of Minnesota, told a group of elderly voters, mostly black, at Sabathani Community Center last week. “People were denied the right that we take for granted. And well lose it, on Nov. 6, if we dont get out and vote no.

National: Latinos and African Americans targeted by voter purges, lawsuit alleges | Chron.com

Harris County rejected more voter registration applications than any other Texas county and the county’s tax assessor-collector systematically targeted Hispanics and African-Americans in voting-roll purges from 2009 to 2012, the League of United Latin American Citizens and seven citizens charged in a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday. The suit alleges the county has violated the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. It also claims that Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners has not followed the terms of a 2009 settlement of a previous lawsuit the Democratic Party filed against the county’s voter registration procedures. “Sumners targets the Latino and black communities in his voter-purging by ZIP code,” said San Antonio attorney Luis Roberto Vera Jr., LULAC’S national general counsel.

Editorials: Did Republicans Just Save The Voting Rights Act? | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

One year ago, maybe even six months ago, conventional wisdom had it that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act was in jeopardy, susceptible to another aggressive ruling by a very conservative United States Supreme Court. The five Republican-appointed justices would rule, the theory went, that there was no longer a need for local lawmakers to “pre-clear” voting laws or gerrymanders with federal officials, because Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act had been so successful since its implementation that it was no longer necessary to protect minority rights. Justice Clarence Thomas, a black man who grew up in Georgia, one of the states “covered” by the Voting Rights Act because of its long history of racial discrimination, said so himself just a few years ago. In Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder. a 2009 decision in which the Court uneasily upheld the Voting Rights Act, Justice Thomas declared, as the lone dissenter, that: “The extensive pattern of discrimination that led the Court to previously uphold §5 as enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment no longer exists. Covered jurisdictions are not now engaged in a systematic campaign to deny black citizens access to the ballot through intimidation and violence. And the days of “grandfather clauses, property qualifications, ‘good character’ tests, and the requirement that registrants ‘understand’ or ‘interpret’ certain matter,” are gone. There is thus currently no concerted effort in these jurisdictions to engage in the “unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution,” that served as the constitutional basis for upholding the “uncommon exercise of congressional power” embodied in §5.”

Montana: Tribes Demand Equal Access to Early Voting | ICTMN.com

On October 10, members of three Montana tribes—Northern Cheyenne, Crow and Gros Ventre and Assiniboine—filed a voting-rights lawsuit in federal court in Billings. One defendant is Montana’s head election official, Secretary of State Linda McCulloch. The other 13 are commissioners and election officers of Rosebud, Big Horn and Blaine counties, which overlap the three tribes’ reservations, respectively, and handle their non-tribal elections. The tribal members are suing because the officials do not plan to provide the three reservations with satellite offices for early voting, which got underway in Montana on October 9 and runs through election day. The 16 plaintiffs say this violates rights protected by the United States and Montana constitutions and the Voting Rights Act (VRA). All three counties named have lost or settled VRA suits. Today’s failure to provide satellite early voting reinforces a “history of official racial discrimination in voting,” the suit said.

South Carolina: Court Blocks South Carolina Voter ID Law, for Now | NYTimes

A federal court on Wednesday blocked South Carolina from enforcing its new voter photo ID law in next month’s election, saying that there was not enough time to educate voters and officials about it. The ruling was the latest in a string of judicial interventions blunting a wave of Republican-led efforts to impose new restrictions on voting for the Nov. 6 election. But the court also ruled that South Carolina might put the law into effect in 2013. That permission, however, was contingent on a promise by state election officials to use an “extremely broad interpretation” of a provision that will make exceptions for voters who lack photo ID cards, allowing them to cast ballots as long as they give a reason for not having obtained one.

South Carolina: South Carolina Voter ID Blocked In 2012, Cleared For 2013 | TPM

A panel of federal judges ruled on Wednesday that South Carolina’s new voter ID does not have a discriminatory effect, but they also blocked it from going into effect in November. A Justice Department spokeswoman said DOJ was pleased that the court blocked the law from going into effect next month and noted that the law underwent “broad modifications” during the course of the trial to allow it to comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the ruling “a major victory for South Carolina and its elections process. It affirms our voter ID law is valid and constitutional under the Voting Rights Act. The fact remains, voter ID laws do not discriminate or disenfranchise; they ensure integrity at the ballot box,” he said in a statement. The Washington, D.C.-based panel concluded that the voter ID law was “not enacted for a discriminatory purpose” and precleared the law for any election in 2013. But it blocked the state from implementing the law this year “given the short time left before the 2012 elections, and given the numerous steps necessary to properly implement the law — particularly the new ‘reasonable impediment’ provision — and ensure that the law would not have discriminatory retrogressive effects on African-American voters.”

South Carolina: South Carolina voter ID law blocked until 2013 | Reuters

A federal court ruled on Wednesday that South Carolina may not implement a photo ID law for voters until 2013, in the latest setback for a mainly Republican effort to establish identification rules in several states before the November 6 elections. South Carolina joined Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin as states with voter ID laws that have been blocked or deferred by state or federal judges. A three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in Washington said unanimously that South Carolina’s law would not discriminate against racial minorities. The U.S. Justice Department had argued the measure ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark of the civil rights movement. But the judges said there was too little time to put the law into effect this year, and added they might have blocked the law entirely if South Carolina had not pledged to give wide leeway to voters who cannot comply.

Mississippi: Voter ID Law Put On Hold For Election Following Federal Review | Reuters

Mississippi’s controversial new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls will not be in effect for the November general election while federal officials review whether the measure is discriminatory, the state said on Tuesday. It was the second setback for voter ID laws in a single day, coming on the heels of a judge in Pennsylvania ordering officials there to delay implementing a photo ID requirement until after the Nov. 6 election. Voters in Mississippi approved a voter ID ballot initiative by a wide margin last November. But as part of the implementation, the state provided insufficient evidence for the U.S. Department of Justice to determine whether the new law would violate the Voting Rights Act, the agency’s voting section chief T. Christian Herren Jr. said in a letter on Monday.

South Carolina: Voter ID debate shifts to South Carolina as campaigners challenge restrictions | guardian.co.uk

The battle over voting rights in the November presidential election now swings to South Carolina, following the decision by the Pennsylvania courts on Tuesday to delay implementation of a voter ID requirement in that state. All eyes are now on the legal tussle between the department of justice and South Carolina, where probably the last voter ID law will be decided before election day on 6 November. Last year South Carolina became one of at least 34 states to introduce strict laws that require voters to present photo identification at polling stations – one of a swathe of measures attacking voting rights that swept across the US this election cycle. South Carolina’s law was blocked, however, by the Obama administration last June.

South Carolina: Justice Department clears South Carolina’s online voter registration law | The Augusta Chronicle

South Carolina’s online voter registration law has won federal approval, allowing just a few days for people to use the easier option to sign up to vote Nov. 6. The U.S. Justice Department waited until its deadline to act on the state law signed in June. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina must receive the federal agency’s approval for any election law change. The law, passed unanimously by the Legis­lature, removes several steps from the paper registration process. Sup­porters say the online option will help voters, improve the accuracy of voter rolls and save money. South Carolina is the 13th state to implement online voter registration. The system was available by Tuesday afternoon through a link on the state Election Commission Web site. People who want to vote Nov. 6 can register through Saturday. State law requires registration at least 31 days before an election.