Obstacles To Minority Voting Remain, Report Says

In the Supreme Court's recent decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissent concluding that the Court should have found a major provision of the Voting Rights Act, Sec. 5, to be unconstitutional. None of the other justices joined Thomas' dissent, and the majority decided the case without reaching the constitutional issue.

Charles S. Johnson, a partner at Holland & Knight and board president of the Southern Regional Council, in a post for the southernchanges blog wrote:

In the course of his opinion, Justice Thomas acknowledged the history of coordinated intimidation and violence which prevented 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.

According to Justice Thomas, however, the kind of discrimination which previously justified Section 5 no longer exists. As proof, he noted that the systematic campaigns of intimidation and violence are gone, as are the discriminatory voter qualification laws. Although Congress had taken note of ‘second generation barriers' constructed to exclude minority voters, Justice Thomas concluded that evidence of such barriers was not sufficient to justify the continued use of Section 5.

Contrary to Justice Thomas' assertion, barriers to voting continue to be erected in jurisdictions covered by Section 5. Evidence of these barriers is described in the Congressional record and in a recent study by the Southern Regional Council. This evidence demonstrates ongoing attempts to dilute and diminish minority voting strength, including restrictions on registration and voting, discriminatory annexations and de-annexations, high school diploma requirements for holding office, discriminatory consolidations, and relocation of polling places.

Johnson's entire blog post is here. For further analysis of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder see Mark A. Posner's guest blog here.