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If the communists on the court were against this, maybe it’s not half bad.
For instance: documented instances of voter intimidation. We know of one in Philadelphia. Wouldn't that be ironic?
Great. So our partisan Congress is given the power to determine which states should be exposed to additional voter fraud. There’s no way they would ever abuse that power in order to rig elections.
Sounds to me like the Court has just made the Voting Rights Act a dead letter. Since the Congress will never agree on how to redo the map, it will just sit in a corner and gather dust like a buggy whip.
He says they are going to mobilize and MARCH and demand congressional action,
good luck with the house Al , I am sure the GOP senators will sellout again though.
This is good and about time.
A 5-4 victory in the highest court in the nation is NO victory for the owners of this country, us.
Boy another 5-4 indecision. No honest person can tell me this is based on the constitution which is the ONLY criteria the USSC should be using.
5-4, 5-4, 5-4 ,5-4... = political hacks, political hacks, political hacks, political hacks...
What trash we have sitting on OUR USSC. Brilliant minds? Hell no. Political hacks is all they are and easily blackmailed to boot.
If the best and brightest legal minds in the country (we were told they were right?) cannot agree on what a small document like the US Constitution says how on earth can they interpret the multi-thousand page laws crafted by community organizing groups then passed by our unconstitutional ruling elite?
We live in a country ruled by By Washington elites, For Washington elites all the while the US Constitution forbids this kind of ruling elite. An once again, another day, we do nothing.
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth .............
What is NBC saying here... as opposed to what? the less liberal wing?
As a proud Southerner by birth, a current resident of a Southern state, and a US citizen, I want to know why laws are applied to me that aren’t uniformly applied to all.
So what happens if Congress is not able to agree on a new formula?
Preclearance was an issue debated when the Voting Rights Act was renewed for 25 years in 2006. President George W. Bush should have vetoed the legislation for this very reason. Instead he signed the bill and included Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton in the signing ceremony in July 2006.
No more Bushes.
I’m amused at all of the “good face” optimists posting here.
I’m sure they were the same ones who were buoyed last July by the SCOTUS decision that the Obamacare mandate was a tax.
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This is annoying. The world HAS changed- a lot. When I am in my classroom teaching my students, the situation is the oldest person in the room (me) was born at the dawn of the ‘70s, therefore, 1965 is history. To my students, who are currently people born in the late 1990s, 1965 might has well have been 1865. Or 1765. This law reflects a situation that no longer really exists, save in the minds of a few doddering antiques and some people who make bales of political hay and cash off of race pimping. It should have been struck down in its entirety.
Also, when exactly is the South going to be treated as an equal part of the United States? Is Federal supervision of what is properly an internal state matter going to go on perpetuity, or is it going to take a 2nd Civil War to restore an equal place in the Union? (Which then opens the question- do we really want to be? :P )
FROM HOTAIR:
In order for the VRA to interfere with state sovereignty, Congress has to identify where racial discrimination in voting access is so endemic as to require that kind of intervention now, and not 50 years ago:
(3) Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically. Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates” in covered jurisdictions “now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” Northwest Austin, supra, at 202. The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not eased §5’s restrictions or narrowed the scope of §4’s coverage formula along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they have grown even stronger. Because §5 applies only to those jurisdictions singled out by §4, the Court turns to consider that provision. Pp. 13–17.
The defense of those 50-year-old definitions did not impress the court:
(2) The Government attempts to defend the formula on grounds that it is “reverse-engineered”—Congress identified the jurisdictions to be covered and then came up with criteria to describe them. Katzenbach did not sanction such an approach, reasoning instead that the coverage formula was rational because the “formula . . . was relevant to the problem.” 383 U. S., at 329, 330. The Government has a fallback argument—because the formula was relevant in 1965, its continued use is permissible so long as any discrimination remains in the States identified in 1965. But this does not look to “current political conditions,” Northwest Austin, supra, at 203, instead relying on a comparison between the States in 1965. But history did not end in 1965. In assessing the “current need[ ]” for a preclearance system treating States differently from one another today, history since 1965 cannot be ignored. The Fifteenth Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future. To serve that purpose, Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. Pp. 18–21.
In other words, the government couldn’t even make an argument that the endemic discrimination that required federal interference in state-level legislative processes still existed. They just argued that because the conditions existed 50 years ago, they might still be a problem today — an argument that lends itself to unlimited exercise. Small wonder the court found this irrational.
speaks to current conditions.. maybe Roberts feeels less threatened now with all the scandals unraveling the O regime..
Given how supposedly sensitive the court is to public perception/popularity, I kinda wonder if they’ve arranged these last three big rulings on purpose..
First, they can claim that they went to the Right with the Voting Rights Act. Then they can claim that they went down the middle when they punted on affirmative action. And they’ll claim that they went Left with a bombshell on homo marriage.
Overall, they’ll be able to say that they were “balanced”.. in some twisted way. It makes me wonder, given how popularity/legacy-obsessed Roberts seems.