Sometimes it seems that America has begun the irreversible spiral down the drain of European style liberalism but here’s a glorious reaffirmation of our American system and common sense. The SCOTUS decided unanimously against a lower court that carelessly decided to make law from the bench.
Supreme Court Sides with Texas on Redistricting Plan
By Robert Barnes, Washington Post, January 20, 2012
Justices’ Texas Redistricting Ruling Likely to Help G.O.P.
By Adam Liptak, NYT, January 20, 2012
This case involves redistricting in Texas made necessary by population growth that will create four new House districts there in 2012. The actions also involve the lingering commitment by some to the concept of affirmative action and to the creation of voting districts that guarantee the election of minority candidates. The tool for the complainants is The Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but it gets more complicated.
The Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of blacks. As is typical of legislators, the new law basically repeated the already existing law encompassed in the 15th Amendment – no need to enforce existing law when we can create something redundant.
No state may impose any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
In the new law, Congress specifically outlawed literacy tests intended to prevent blacks from registering to vote.
The Act was signed into law by President Johnson and has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006 and the extension continued to include the Act’s controversial Section 5.
The controversial Section 5 is known as the “preclearance process”. That clause applies only to states that had used a "device" to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964. Those states, which include Texas, could no longer implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice or a panel of federal judges in Washington. This usurpation of states’ rights may well be unconstitutional – it has never been tested.
OK so Texas created a new districting plan and chose the Washington federal judge option to obtain preclearance. But that panel won’t decide until next month and Texas needs a decision by February 1st in order to hold its already delayed primary on its April 3rd schedule. That put a second court in the process in San Antonio which was trying to create an interim districting plan that would allow the primaries to proceed.
The San Antonio court ignored the legislature’s plan altogether and created an entirely new plan that appeared to deliberately create “a minority coalition district” – in other words a three judge panel’s attempt at affirmative action. The San Antonio court ordered its plan into effect so Texas went to the SCOTUS and asked that they block the lower court which SCOTUS did with some unanimous energy.
The high court was especially critical of the San Antonio judges for drawing a congressional district that appeared to be a “minority coalition” district. “If the district court did set out to create a minority coalition district, rather than drawing a district that simply reflected population growth, it had no basis for doing so,” the order said. [Wow, very cool.]
The constitutionality of Section 5 was not at issue in the case, but the opinion said its “intrusion on state sovereignty” raises “serious constitutional questions,” a position already taken by the Court in a 2009 decision.
In my view, if there was ever a time for affirmative action – meaning a court making and enforcing its own laws – that time is long past. And the implication of affirmative action that diversity is somehow more important than merit or that discrimination can be sometimes be Constitutional was always unAmerican.
Here are the states affected by the VRA.
States needing preclearance:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Georgia
Louisiana
Mississippi
South Carolina
Texas
Virginia [except for fourteen counties]
States needing preclearance only in some counties and townships:
California
Florida
Michigan
New Hampshire
New York
North Carolina
South Dakota
Oh and another thing. Note the headline on the lefty NYT’s story written by the lefty Adam Liptak. This decision was a victory for the rule of law not for any political party. If it was “interpreted as a victory for Texas Republicans”, then the interpretation was made by political activists. The SCOTUS is the last American institution to retain any public confidence and respect. Ignore those who would politicize this too.
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