Per Drudge - FLASH: Section 4 of Voting Rights Act unconstitutional...

Drudge report ^

[Perdogg]

Per Drudge - FLASH: Section 4 of Voting Rights Act unconstitutional...

[BuckeyeTexan]

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

[Izzy Dunne]

Voting Rights Act, Section 4

[harpu]

AND Texas JUST ROLLED-OVER and voted into law the (minority 'protecting') redistricting done by the Federal Courts for the 2012 elections.

My, my, my! Ain't we just the smartest-of-the-smart when it comes to gettin' screwed by the Feds.

[Uncle Miltie]

Formulas for rights.

Ugly.

[crosslink]

Here is the decision

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf

[peyton randolph]

Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions

---

I fully expect Obama to issue a new oppressive formula by executive decree to ensure all of us crackers in the South get what's coming to us. It's what Abe Lincoln would have wanted after all.

[BuckeyeTexan]

The Court did not issue a holding on Section 5. They said specifically that Congress is free to legislate a new coverage formula.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Read that vote was 5 - 4...but didn’t see the breakdown...

Do we need to? I bet it was the usual political split.

[Red Badger]

[crosslink]

sorry I can’t spell as I post.

[sickoflibs]

Here's excerpts and the direct link to the article that Drudge posted

The Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act Monday, a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that helped dismantle decades of discriminatory voting restrictions in the South when it passed 60 years ago. The vote was 5-4, with the court's liberal justices dissenting.
....
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, reauthorized by Congress in 2006, gives the federal government the ability to pre-emptively reject changes to election law in states and counties that have a history of discriminating against minority voters. The law covers nine states and portions of seven more, most of them in the South. The formula used to decide which states are subject to this special scrutiny (set out in Section 4 of the law) is based on decades-old voter turnout and registration data, the justices ruled, which is unfair to the states covered under it.
Supreme Court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act(yahoo news today)

MSNBC will be burning tonight, at least this will dampen their celibration if the gay rights cases go bad.

[Enterprise]

I’m just commenting what the reporters have said.

[PapaBear3625]

text of voting rights act (PDF) See PDF page 14. Section 4 is the one which puts certain jurisdictions under federal courts, where they must seek approval of any rules which may affect qualifications for voting, or may affect blacks ability to vote.

[mongo141]

Our Fing communist administration will just ignore this and anything else that has an effect on its plans.

[Will88]

Sounds like good news, but the short article begins discussing Section 4 and then jumps to Section 5 and it’s not clear exactly what’s been shot down. There’s usually a lag between the first announcement and a clear understanding of what a ruling means.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Gotcha.

[green iguana]

The judges didn’t throw out section 5 (preclearence), they threw out section 4, which set the formula for preclearence.

They ruled that the formula was unconstitutional as it doesn’t appy evenly to all states and there is no valid reason today for it not to do so.

The decision effectively throws out section 5 unless Congress comes up with a new formula that applies to all the states.

[Enterprise]

Thank you.

[Prospero]

If I understand correctly, Section 5 (not "4") was not struck down. Only the ancient list of proscribed counties, all the counties in some States, requiring federal pre-clearance before any changes are made in election law.

For example, in N.C. 40 of 100 counties are, or were, "covered" under Sec. 5:

Congress, who placed these counties on this list in 1965, can draw up a new list (or make federal pre-clearance universal).

Preclearance comes either from a Three-Judge federal panel or from the DOJ Civil Rights Division (or both, in some cases.)

There are some redistricting plans presently in litigation, and how they are or are not affected I don't yet know.

[0.E.O]

If it was 5 to 4 then we can all guess the breakdown: Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg and Breyer against and Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Roberts for.