The Supreme Court chose, 8 to 1, not to mess with the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts, who is able to make the blandest statements seem ominous, wrote, “Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”
Emphasis on today. And on do not answer. Though conservative justices “derided” Section 5 of the Act (the part of the law in question, which requires thousands of municipalities in southern states with histories of discrimination to receive Justice Department clearance before changing their voting procedures), they left it intact. Instead, they created a way for municipalities to seek exemption.
The ruling puzzled experts, who expected the Court to strike down the provision. The Court’s relative restraint might have been a signal to Congress that the law needed to change; it may have been a way to undermine the Voting Rights Act without appearing to be the dreaded “activist” judges everyone carps about. In any case, it occurs at a time when new groups of voters need protections, a need that requires looking forward as well as back.
Published by
kotch on
April 21, 2009 in
Related News.
Tags: Chief Justice, Civil Rights Act, colorblindness, firefighters, John Roberts, race, racial discrimination, reverse discrimination, standardized tests, Supreme Court, Texas, Voting Rights Act.
This week, the United States Supreme Court will consider a number of cases that address the legacies of the civil rights movement and the institutional legacies of what the movement sought to change. Of particular interest is a so-called “reverse discrimination” case in Connecticut, where white firefighters sued when they missed out on promotions because no blacks would have won advancement.
The suit gets at the tricky question of minority performance on standardized tests–such tests may not be designed to discriminate (like literacy tests or poll taxes), but the result discriminates nonetheless.
This case and others come before a Supreme Court increasingly invested in the language of colorblindness. Chief Justice John Roberts, in the news most recently for flubbing the swearing-in of our first black president, said of one voting rights case, “a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Indeed. All the more reason to challenge the renewal of the 1965 Civil Rights Act (right, Texas?).