by Nicole Flatow
A federal appeals court rejected a challenge today to the constitutionality of a key section of the Voting Rights Act, concluding that Congress is in the best position to determine how to combat persistent racial discrimination in elections.
In a 63-page opinion, D.C. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel noted the persistence of “overt racial discrimination” in jurisdictions covered by Section 5, and called such discrimination “one of the gravest evils that Congress can seek to redress.” How best to combat this discrimination, he concluded, is “quintessentially” a legislative judgment.
“[W]e remain bound by fundamental principles of judicial restraint,” Tatel wrote.
per curiam decision is limited. What’s most significant is an issue the Court doesn’t address: whether Section 5 is constitutional. That’s the 800 pound gorilla which the justices (with the noteworthy exception of Justice Thomas) avoid mentioning – but will probably come before them in the not-too-distant future.
cting cycle full steam ahead, the VRA becomes controlling when plaintiffs seek to challenge newly drawn maps of legislative districts with sections (2) and (5) being invoked. Section 2 prohibits any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure” being imposed or applied to any State or political subdivision” that would “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color” while Section (5) requires a DOJ or US District Court of DC “pre-clearance” when seeking to administer any voting qualification, procedure, standard, practice or procedure “different from that in force or effect November 1, 1964.”
evented people from voting during the Jim Crow era. He acknowledged that this campaign of violence was eventually supplemented and in part replaced by more subtle methods of discrimination, such as discriminatory literacy tests and voter qualification laws. He acknowledged that case-by-case voting rights litigation in the years prior to the adoption of the Act was inadequate to ensure that all citizens were able to vote.