Rights Groups Defend Voting Rights Act Before Supreme Court

Yesterday the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a brief, along with several other public-interest law firms and nonprofit foundations, in what is shaping up to be the most important voting rights case to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years. Some experts contend that if the Court repudiates the lower court rulings in the case, which have upheld a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Section 5, it would undermine much of the Act’s authority. Joining LDF in the brief are the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, and People for the American Way.

At issue in the case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, is a constitutional challenge to the Section 5 preclearance provision of the Act.  That provision requires jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to submit proposed voting changes to the Department of Justice of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals for pre-approval.  LDF is representing African American residents that live in the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number 1 (“MUD”).

The organizations’ friend-of-the-court-brief underscores the rule’s significance. “But for Section 5,” it says at one point, “… the ability of minorities to participate in our democracy would have been severely impaired.”

In 2006, after reviewing an expansive record, the Congress agreed with the need for Section 5 when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act. The Northwest Austin district originally sued to ask to be exempt from Section 5. It’s now asking for the provision to be declared unconstitutional. Last spring the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected the district’s claims.

The district’s brief to the Supreme Court also includes the assertion that, with the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American President, there is no longer a need for the Voting Rights Act at all.

But the brief counters that “No statute in our history embodies America’s commitment to democracy more clearly than the Voting Rights Act. Since 1965, Congress and five presidents have acted to create or preserve this statutory framework designed to prevent racially discriminatory barriers that deny or abridge our citizens’ right to vote.

“This case is the latest in a line of challenges  … [that have claimed the country no longer needs Section 5, the heart of the Voting Rights Act, to be the inclusive democracy that we strive to become … This argument cannot be reconciled with the evidence.”

Read more about the case on LDF’s website and view the brief (PDF).