Court Upholds Key Provision of the Voting Rights Act

By NEIL A. LEWIS - The New York Times - May 31, 2008
WASHINGTON — A special three-judge court ruled Friday that Congress acted constitutionally when it extended the law requiring sections of the country with a history of racial discrimination to get federal approval for any changes in voting procedures.

The unanimous decision upheld a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, which Congress initially passed in 1965 and has extended several times since, most recently for 25 years in 2006. Section 5 of the law prohibits several states, mostly in the South, and some local government agencies from changing their election practices without permission from the Justice Department or the courts.

Each renewal of the law has been followed by a legal challenge from some state or local agency to this “preclearance” requirement. The latest challenge was undertaken by the board of a public utility near Austin, Tex., which said the requirement conferred a “badge of shame” over “conditions that existed 30 or more years ago but have long since been remedied.”

The Northwest Austin Utility District argued that Congress lacked sufficient evidence of racial discrimination to justify the intrusion on state sovereignty.

Judge David S. Tatel, who wrote Friday’s decision, agreed with the Justice Department, however, that Congress was appropriately concerned about discrimination against minority voters. The law was extended, Judge Tatel said, only after substantial Congressional findings that “attempts to discriminate persist and evolve.” He noted that from 1980 to 2000, the attorney general acted to block 421 voting changes that the Justice Department had found “intentionally discriminatory.”

The law initially applied only to the states of the Confederacy and was intended to address schemes like poll taxes, which, dating from Reconstruction, were devised by local officials to discourage black voter participation. But its requirements have since been expanded to some parts of New York, Michigan and California, where the concern is about the rights of ethnic groups other than African-Americans.

Judge Tatel, of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was joined in Friday’s decision by Paul L. Friedman and Emmet G. Sullivan, both federal district judges in Washington. Under the Voting Rights Act, their ruling may be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Such an appeal is considered likely.