Voting Rights Law Draws Skepticism From Justices

[Draggingtree]

The New York Times:

Voting Rights Law Draws Skepticism From Justices

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: February 27, 2013

 

WASHINGTON — A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court’s more conservative members.

 

If the court overturns the provision, nine states, mostly in the South, would become free to change voting procedures without first getting permission from federal officials.

 

In a vivid argument in which the lawyers and justices drew varying lessons from the legacies of slavery, the Civil War and the civil rights movement, the court’s conservative wing suggested that the modern South had outgrown its troubled past and that the legal burdens on the nine states were no longer justified.

[Draggingtree]

Cries of Racism Cloud Real Issues in Court

 

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.28.2013 - 2:00 PM

Liberals are jumping all over Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment yesterday during an oral hearing in which he asked whether continuing the special enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act in some states was a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Many, including his court colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor, seemed to interpret it as questioning whether the right to vote is itself a “racial entitlement.” For his pains, Scalia was branded a racist. What is left of the aging remnants of the once-vital civil rights movement are hoping that outrage about that remark can galvanize public pressure not just for the continuation of the Voting Rights Act as it currently stands, but against both voter integrity laws and the system of racial majority districts.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/02/28/cries-of-racism-cloud-real-issues-in-court-voting-rights-act-scalia/

[Draggingtree]

Chief justice out to end affirmative action

 

By Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst

updated 3:15 PM EST, Thu February 28, 2013

 

Editor's note: Jeffrey Toobin is a senior legal analyst for CNN and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, where he covers legal affairs. He is the author of "The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court."

 

(CNN) -- Every chief justice of the United States picks a signature issue. After Wednesday's argument on the future of the Voting Rights Act, it's clearer than ever that John Roberts has made his choice: to declare victory in the nation's fight against racial discrimination and then to disable the weapons with which that struggle was won.

Roberts' predecessors staked their ground in many ways. In the '50s and '60s, Earl Warren wanted to integrate the South. In the next decade, Warren Burger decided to fight crime. In the '80s and '90s, William Rehnquist sought to revive states' rights. Roberts came of age as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, and there he discovered a cause that he has made his own: the color-blind Constitution http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/opinion/toobin-roberts-voting-rights-act/index.html

[clearvision]

How does Roberts ruling on this case make it his signature issue?

[Draggingtree]

Is Voting Rights Act Protection a legal entitlement Supreme Court Must Overturn

 

 

By: kfobbs (Diary) | March 2nd, 2013 at 06:30 PM

 

Black Conservatives rally against continued

use ofSection 5 reverse discriminatory

Voting Rights Act current use

 

The images of vicious bombings that once littered the landscape of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s in America are now a distant memory. Cities like Birmingham, Alabama which were at the epicenter and caught the brunt force of the segregationist fury to deprive black voters of their voting rights have been replaced by a vast number of local and federal minority public officials throughout states and in congress. And of course we cannot forget the two times elected Barack Obama, as president!

 

So this week, Shelby County, Alabama made the case before the U.S. Supreme Court that the federal Voting Rights Act has seen its day and that Section Five should be overturned. Conservatives have long held that in states and localities like Shelby County where voting rights suppression no longer exists, it makes little legal or moral sense to continue to list a community as being engaged in racist voting practices where none exist.

 

A central question that the court must answer, is when does justice arrive for all Americans if institutional injustice does not exist any longer? If racism in voting practices no longer exists, then what is being monitored? http://www.redstate.com/kfobbs/2013/03/02/is-voting-rights-act-protection-a-legal-entitlement-supreme-court-must-overturn/

[Valin]

Is it still 1953?

[Draggingtree]

How does Roberts ruling on this case make it his signature issue?

Well if you remember when Obamacare came up befor the court the writers we saying that this case was going to be Roberts signature issue, which it was by his incorrect re-writing of the law. So my opinion the CNN Senior Legal writer is just painting a picture to add to his article.

[Draggingtree]

Is it still 1953?

good question Valin it's 2013 and I have aged along with the country, just look at the breakdown of the minority's voting in each election which would tell you (court) the law isn't needed.

 

[Valin]

Is it still 1953?

good question Valin it's 2013 and I have aged along with the country, just look at the breakdown of the minority's voting in each election which would tell you (court) the law isn't needed.

 

 

Not for the Left. On this subject (as so many others) they are stuck in the past.

The Left has to do this. If Institutional Systemic Racism no longer exists, they cannot scare a large part of their voting block. That means they have to actually produce real actual policies to help Black move out of poverty, instead of blaming "The Man".