The Right Wing Takes Aim at Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is under attack this week in the Supreme Court by Shelby County, Alabama, backed by much of the legal infrastructure of the Right. 

 

While the Roberts Court Considers Turning the Clock Back, 21st Century Progressives Need to Fight for Strong Democracy

By Jamie Raskin

“The past isn’t dead.  It isn’t even past.”    --William Faulkner

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the monumental statutory achievement of Congress in the last century, is under attack this week in the Supreme Court by Shelby County, Alabama, backed by much of the legal infrastructure of the American right.

When Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow “color blind” arch-conservatives take up the ominous Shelby County v. Holder¹  on Wednesday, hold your breath. Despite the painstaking rejection of Shelby County’s arguments below in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the far right is salivating because Chief Justice Roberts, in a near-miss decision on the same subject in 2009, has already expressed the sentiment of his colleagues in the majority that the Act now “raises serious constitutional questions.”² Of course, John Roberts was never much of a fan--as a lawyer, he tried to kill the implementation of a “results” test for voting rights violations under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it came up for reauthorization in 1982.