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Texans Watch With Great Interest as Voting Rights Act Challenge Goes Before US Supreme Court

Posted byHoumanitarian

Video: The Case Before the Court (CBS News)

Julián Aguilar, Texas Tribune
For a veteran lawmaker like state Rep. Sylvester Turner, it seems few things are more important than Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act.

During a news conference leading up to Wednesday’s oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Houston Democrat said the issue at hand — whether Texas and other states should be governed by that federal law — will affect the progress that helped propel him to public office. The Voting Rights Act was a key piece of civil rights legislation pushed by one Texas president, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, and reauthorized by another, George W. Bush.

“There are 18 African-American legislators in the Texas House and two African-American state senators,” he told reporters. “I think it goes without saying that many of us, if not all of us, but certainly many of us, would not be here at the state Capitol were it not for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

In the case, Shelby County v. Holder, the court will decide if Congress overstepped its authority when it voted in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the landmark civil rights legislation for 25 years. The rule requires that a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., or the U.S. Department of Justice preclear state laws that affect voting in states — like Texas — with a history of racial discrimination. Without approval from DOJ or the courts, the state can’t change its election laws.

The section has been used to reject lawmakers’ efforts here to draw congressional and state House and Senate maps, and to put on hold the contentious voter ID law passed in 2011. A federal court ruled the maps drawn in 2011 were discriminatory, and the U.S. Justice Department said the voter ID bill would disproportionately affect otherwise eligible voters who did not have IDs or proper access to one. The 2012 elections were conducted using maps drawn by federal judges instead of those drawn by the Legislature.

Aside from arguing Congress overstepped its authority, plaintiffs in the Alabama case said that Section 5 “is seriously flawed and undermines the principle of equal sovereignty.” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed an amicus brief with the court in August supporting Shelby County’s claim.

Democrats say Abbott has an abysmal track record against the federal government and offer that as proof that Republican lawmakers haven’t played by the rules.

“When I hear people like General Abbott say that Section 5 has outlived its purpose, that we no longer need Section 5, I think what he’s telling you is that he’s tired of losing under Section 5,” state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said Monday.

Martinez Fischer is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which, along with the Texas chapter of the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), filed an amicus brief in support of keeping the provision in law.

The issue isn’t necessarily a partisan one, Martinez Fischer said. Texas was added to the list of covered jurisdictions after lawmakers tried to pass an English-only ballot law in the 1970s, and the fight has continued in the ensuing decades, including when Democrats ruled at the state level. The latest slew of federal rejections, he said, reinforces that minorities in Texas need continued protection under the law, citing language from the court’s rejection last year of state-drawn maps as proof that lawmakers went beyond the limits.

“A very disinterested court in Washington, D.C., found for the first time there was actually intentional discrimination,” Martinez Fischer said, adding that the court usually rejects maps if it finds they hurt minority voting rights. “In this instance, the evidence was so overwhelming this court actually found a cognizant, deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters.”
(Read more at the Texas Tribune)

MORE COVERAGE:

• Supreme Court Weighs Future Of Voting Rights Act (NPR)
• The Voting Rights Act’s Work Isn’t Finished (Washington Post)
• Supreme Court Likely to Strike Down the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 (Daily Beast)
• Voting Rights Act: Is Major Portion Outdated? Supreme Court to Hear Arguments. (Christian Science Monitor)

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