WASHINGTON — The question of whether America needs the Voting Rights Act now that a black man has won the presidency looms over a major appeal the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider in its private conference Friday. The justices could say as early as Friday if they will hear a challenge to the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act renewed by Congress in 2006. Their decision could impact federal power to oversee state election practices and to ensure racial minorities have as much of a chance as whites to elect candidates of their choice. The law in dispute was overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2006. Yet the Supreme Court in recent years has found some U.S regulation of the states too intrusive. "If the court takes the case, it has the potential to be the most important election case since Bush v. Gore," says Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, of the 2000 decision that ensured Bush the presidency. He notes the court has earlier upheld the disputed provision. "The question is whether the role of race in American politics has so changed … that remedies that were once constitutional are now impingements on state sovereignty," he says. A Texas utility district says the provision known as Section 5, which gives the U.S. government authority to oversee state electoral-law changes, is no longer needed. "The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965," say lawyers for the utility district. Section 5 covers nine mostly Southern states and several counties and municipalities where, as Justice Department lawyers note, race discrimination "has been most flagrant." Texas utility district lawyer Gregory Coleman says the continued use of that section attaches a "badge of shame … based on old data" and should be lifted. Civil rights advocates, backing the Justice Department's defense of the renewed Voting Rights Act, stress that parts of the nation still vote along racial lines and argue the law that opened the door to widespread black voting four decades ago is needed. The act ended literacy tests and other state measures that had kept blacks from the polls. "Obama's election reflects an enormous advancement in race relations in the United States," says Laughlin McDonald of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But voting, particularly in the South, remains significantly polarized." Exit polls from the Nov. 4 presidential election showed whites in many Southern states heavily favored John McCain to Obama. In Texas, 73% of whites favored McCain, in Georgia, 76%, and in Alabama, 88%. Nationally, the percentage of whites for McCain was 55%, exit poll data show. The utility district's appeal of a special three-judge court's decision upholding the law requires a resolution. Unlike the vast majority of petitions that come before the justices and can be turned away without ruling on the merits, this appeal must either be affirmed or overturned. The justices could affirm the lower court's decision without a hearing, as the Department of Justice has urged. That might be the most cautious route in a case that, in Hasen's view, offers a "powder keg" of divisive issues. Yet the complex question might warrant a full briefing, as might a majority's uncertainty about the lower court decision. The court is split on questions of racial policies. In a unanimous ruling last May, the lower court said Congress had documented extensive evidence of "contemporary racial discrimination" and had grounds to renew the law for 25 years. States covered by Section 5 cannot alter electoral laws without approval from the Justice Department or a U.S. court in Washington. The provision is designed to bar laws that dilute minority votes. |
 |
| Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-01-08-court_N.htm |
No comments:
Post a Comment