Voting Rights Act gets partial win on eve of 50th anniversary
Constitution Daily is hosting a blog symposium honoring the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Contributions come from Roger Clegg, Rick Hasen, Kermit Roosevelt, J. Christian Adams and Brianne Gorod.
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court ruled that a Texas state voter ID law needs to be reconsidered as violating part of the historic Voting Rights Act, on the eve of the act's 50th anniversary.
A three-judge panel at the Firth Circuit in New Orleans said the Texas voter ID law had the effect of discriminating against minorities, but a lower court needs to reconsider if Texas lawmakers deliberately intended to cause discrimination by passing the law.
The judges also told the lower court to look ways to remedy Voting Rights Act concerns caused by the law, even if the lower court finds that Texas lawmakers didn’t intent to discriminate.
Link: Read The Ruling
The judges also rejected a lower-court ruling that said the law violated the Constitution’s 24th Amendment banning poll taxes. They also didn’t uphold a lower court decision that the law violated the First and 14th Amendments, because violations of the amendments would be covered under any final decision about a Voting Rights Act violation.
In 2013, the United States Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the historic act, which has passed on August 6, 1965 and is seen as a watershed moment in the civil rights movement.
The Act in its original form guaranteed the voting rights of minorities under the 14th and 15th Amendments, including a provision called Section 5 that required states with a history of discrimination to get federal government approval before changing their election laws.
In 2013, the Supreme Court decided in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula used to decide which states had historically discriminated against voters was unconstitutional, and it asked Congress to devise a new coverage formula. The ruling effectively allowed nine states (mostly in the South) to change their election laws without federal approval. But the Obama administration and the Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Eric Holder, vowed to use other parts of the Voting Rights Act to press its case where it believed voter discrimination existed.
The case in the Fifth Circuit is about the validity of the Texas voter identification law and under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 bars "voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group."
Proponents of voter ID laws argue they are needed to prevent voter fraud and the laws aren’t intrusive or discriminatory. Opponents claim voter ID laws discriminate because the laws require minorities to go through difficult steps to obtain an ID and the burden is a modern-day equivalent of the dreaded poll tax.
In late June 2013, Congressman Marc Veasey sued then-Texas Governor Rick Perry after Perry stated that the Texas voter ID law could take effect immediately after the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision was announced.
The GOP-dominated Texas legislature had passed the voter ID law in 2011, but a federal court in 2012 enjoined the law’s enforcement, denying pre-clearance under the law because it believed minorities and the poor would be denied access to the polls.
Last fall, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos struck down the law on constitutional grounds. “The draconian voting requirements .. will disproportionately impact low-income Texans because they are less likely to own or need one of the seven qualified IDs to navigate their lives,” Judge Ramos said in her ruling. But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a stay from the federal appeals court, allowing the law to remain in effect until the Fifth Circuit could rule on the case.
After Wednesday’s ruling, the Texas law will remain in effect as the lower court rehears the case.