In an important decision handed down today the Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press, “refuses to expand voting rights.”
The 5-4 decision, with the court’s conservatives in the majority, could make it harder for southern Democrats to draw friendly boundaries after the 2010 Census.
The court declined to expand protections of the landmark civil rights law to take in electoral districts where the minority population is less than 50 percent of the total, but strong enough to effectively determine the outcome of elections.
The Hill, however, reporting the same decision, claims that the “Supreme Court narrows minority district protections.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that minority voters don’t qualify for a key protection of the Voting Rights Act unless they comprise a majority of voters in a district….
In a 5-4 decision led by the conservative wing of the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the landmark civil rights legislation doesn’t require states to draw “crossover” districts, which would include enough voters who would vote for minority candidates to allow the minority bloc to elect a minority candidat
UPI’s take is that the “Court limits minority ‘dilution’ districts.”
The U.S. Supreme Court Monday limited what legislatures can do to satisfy federal civil rights law, which bans dilution of black voter strength.
The high court ruled 5-4 that new legislative districts with fewer than 50 percent black voters could not be a remedy under federal law to correct the dilution of black voting strength.
So there you have it: the Court “limits” or “narrows” or “refuses to expand” voting rights. No one seems to have considered that what the 5-4 majority did was to apply the law as intended and written, neither restricting nor expanding it.
Well, not no one. Writing on National Review’s The Corner, Roger Clegg, as usual, got it just right.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the Voting Rights Act does not require racial gerrymandering to the nth degree — specifically, that it does not, at least, require such gerrymandering whenever doing so might give a minority group “swing” power in a created district if that group makes up less than 50 percent of the district’s population.
And his evaluation of the decision’s effect also is right on target:
This is a very important decision, since otherwise we would see lawsuits to compel gerrymandering not just when doing so could create a new district made up of a majority of minority voters (which is offensive and constitutionally problematic enough), but in practically any situation where there are any minority voters.
Conservatives, however, should not rejoice. As Clegg points out,
But the decision was only 5-4, so for the next four to eight years, its vitality depends on the vitality of those five. Worse, Justice Ginsburg in her dissent explicitly calls on Congress to overturn the majority opinion.
Since this is my blog, I hereby award the last word (for now) on this issue to … me, and it is the repeat of a golden oldie from 2003 in which I handed out two much-uncoveted awards, one to the Republicans and one to the Democrats:
The Discriminations Hypocrisy Award goes to the Republicans. Under Bush I they realized that they could trumpet their fidelity to the Voting Rights Act, and by implication to black voters, by herding black voters into “majority-minority” districts that would be likely to elect black representatives for the first time. And by draining the surrounding districts of black, i.e., Democratic, votes, the policy would have the added benefit — purely incidental, I’m sure — of electing more Republicans. The Democrats, unable to oppose procedures that would lead to the election of more blacks, were effectively silenced and co-opted.
It was a brilliant tactical move, sacrificing only principle. Twenty-six such districts were created after the 1990 census, greatly contributing to subsequent Republican gains in the South.
The necessity for “majority-minority” districts was based on the assumption of “bloc voting,” that whites wouldn’t vote for blacks, but it did not take long for that assumption to be proven false. Once it became clear that super-majorities of blacks were not necessary to elect at least a significant number of blacks, the Democrats slowly emerged from the woodwork and began to argue (remember, they’ve never been addicted to consistency) that herding too many of blacks into “majority-minority” districts was racist, smacking of apartheid. At the same time, however, they argued that placing too few blacks in a district was also racist. To the Democrats, “too many” means more than enough to assure the election of a Democrat, and “too few” means not enough. By some cosmic co-incidence, the Democrats implicitly argue, that precise balance is what the law requires. This behavior thus has earned the Democrats the much-deserved Discriminations Award for Brazenness.
Both parties, in short, have proven themselves unprincipled. When the Republicans took over the state government in Virginia recently, for example, they moved quickly to round up as many blacks as possible and, freely admitting they were “taking race into account” as one factor among many (sound familiar?), herded them together in as few districts as possible. Not to be undone on the unprincipled front, the Democrats brought in heavy hitter Ronald Klain, Gore’s top advisor and head lawyer in the Florida recount, who, presumably with a straight face, argued to the Virginia Supreme Court: “We submit that what was going on here was race-conscious districting….” (Washington Post, Sept. 13, 2002, p. B5) The Virginia Supremes (including the new black chief justice) were not amused, and ruled for the Republicans.
I will give a one-year subscription to DISCRIMINATIONS, free of charge, to any reader who can point to other examples of Ron Klain, or any big shot Democratic lawyer, objecting to any other “race-conscious” policy.
