Gearing Up for Next Year, a Federal Court Just Took Another Meat Ax to Voting Rights
If the SCOTUS upholds the eighth circuit’s ruling, it could spell the end of the VRA.
It’s been said before, and maybe it’s becoming somewhat of a cliche, but like all cliches there is truth in it: next year’s election is going to be the most important of our lifetimes.
Yes, we said that in 2016.
And in 2018 for the mid-term elections.
Then again in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.
And last year again for mid-terms.
But considering a right-wing so-called “Christian” evangelical gay-hating anti-democratic fundamentalist is now second in the presidential line of succession and it is looking increasingly like Donald Trump, threatening to end democracy, is going to be the republican nominee, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
That’s why republican legislatures are racing the clock to roll back voting rights since the only way republicans win is by bending the system in their favor.
Last week, the eighth circuit court of appeals, with jurisdiction over the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, further chipped away at the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) by determining only the federal government, specifically a sitting US attorney general, not any outside entities, could sue to enforce potential VRA violations.
Section two of the VRA “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act.”
According the Justice Dept.’s Civil Rights Division:
Most of the cases arising under Section 2 since its enactment involved challenges to at-large election schemes, but the section’s prohibition against discrimination in voting applies nationwide to any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Section 2 is permanent and has no expiration date as do certain other provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
In other words, if an individual perceives he or she is being denied the opportunity to vote as delineated under the Fifteen Amendment because of “race, color, or membership in a language minority group,” he or she used to be able to take the case to court.
The Trump-appointed circuit court judges who issued the opinion, David Stras and George W. Bush-appointee Raymond Gruender, however, have just ruled that no longer the case (pun intended).
Why?
Like so many ills plaguing our system, it’s racism.
The Arkansas State Conference NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel sued the Arkansas Board of Apportionment over discriminatory redistricting maps they allege weakened Black voters’ ability to cast ballots.
This ruling essentially renders those groups and other voting advocacy groups impotent unless the US attorney general decides to take up the cause.
Investigative reporter and voting rights expert Greg Palast wrote:
The ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals literally blesses racist blockades to the Voting Rights Act in seven states under its malfeasant jurisdiction (Arkansas, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri). If the US Supreme Court goes along with this ruling, the whole of the United States will be Jim Crow’d…As it is the government itself which is the perpetrator of the crime of vote suppression, this ruling means that only the perpetrator of the crime may sue itself.
This, of course, is anticipating a scenario in which voters are turned away from the polls next year with various racially motivated schemes under the assumption most of those voters are going to vote democratic. In the event a republican “wins,” the new republican-appointed attorney general as well as the lower circuit courts can simply ignore “irrelevant” voting rights groups’ demands to investigate potential cases of voter suppression.
It’s just one more way republicans are rigging the system so another piece of democracy vanishes.
Next stop — the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), with a right-wing majority notorious for such anti-voting rights decisions as demonstrated in the Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC cases.
Of course, it did surprise us with June’s Allen v. Milligan case.
If the SCOTUS upholds the eighth circuit’s ruling, though, it could spell the end of the VRA.
Just in time to gear up for the next presidential election.