US Supreme Court to Review Civil Rights Laws in 2013

The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to again consider the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a federal law that requires certain states and areas within other states to pre-clear with the US Justice Department any change in its voting laws before implementing them. The last time the Court considered this law was in 2009, when it upheld it in a challenge brought against a Texas redistricting plan that discriminated against Hispanic voters by attemting to draw voting district lines that would have greatly reduced the number of Hispanics remaining in the new voting district, making it unlikely that they could re-elect their Hispanic representative. At that time, Chief Justice Roberts expressed concern about continuing to enforce a 40-year-old law merely because it had succeeded. "Past success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain the preclearance requirements," he said. You should understand, dear readers, that States and areas were chosen originally for preclearance based on whether they had a test restricting the opportunity to register or vote and whether they had a voter registration or turnout rate below 50 percent. The much greater percentage of registration and voting by minorities today raises the question whether the original factual and statistical support for the law gathered in the 1960s and early 1980s can continue to be used to justify it. The 2013 Court hearing will consider an appeal of Shelby County, near Birmingham, Alabama, which is trying to have the Voting Rights Act declared unconstitutional. Nearly 12,000 people in Shelby County defied the law and prompted the intervention of the Bush Justice Department. The facts are clear : Ernest Montgomery won election as the only black member of the five-person Calera City Council in 2004 in a district that was almost 71 percent black. The city redrew its district lines in 2006 after new subdivisions and retail developments sprang up in the area Montgomery represented, and the change left his district with a population that was only 23 percent black. Running against a white opponent in the now mostly white district, Montgomery narrowly lost a re-election bid in 2008. The Justice Department invalidated the election result because the city had failed to obtain advance approval of the new districts. The Court will consider the Shelby Coynty case against a background of the re-election of a US President who is a member of a protected minority and where facts show that minority voters were substantially active in voting for and electing him. The over-riding question facing the Court is whether it is time to declare that the American effort to bring minorities into society's mainstream by giving them preferential treatment in areas of voting and education has succeeded so that today these minorities can and should be made to succeed on their own without the help of federal and state law preferential treatment. It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court has also agreed to reconsider affirmative action laws favoring minority students in higher education. Thus, 2013 will be a watershed of one sort or another in the area of minority rights. The battle lines are already being drawn. Edward Blum, director of the not-for-profit Project on Fair Representation, which is funding the challenges to the voting rights law and affirmative action, said : "The America that elected and re-elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965. Congress unwisely reauthorized a bill that is stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp. It is unconstitutional." White Americans in some voting districts could argue that it is they who are being discriminated against because the federally approved redistricting plans make it virtually impossible for white voters to be represented by white elected officials. And in at least one voting district in South Philadelphia, white voters have in recent elections been harrassed and menaced by Black Panther groups when attempting to vote. But defenders of the law say there is a continuing need for it and pointed to the voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas, as well as the redistricting plan in Texas. The irony is that the Voting Rights Act has worked and because of that, it is now seen as a right by minorities instead of being seen as the temporary necessity that has brought them into the mainstream. This is not to say that discrimination has ceased. There are issues relating primarily to re- districting that need to be addressed. But now is the time for the Supreme Court to step up to the challenge and direct the Congress to enact new legislation to provide for a uniform and fair system of voting district creation and adjustment that will put all Americans on an equal footing.