Court Dodges With Voting Rights Decision
Justices ease election protocol, but decline to wade into constitutional issue.
June 22, 2009— -- Dodging a potentially explosive decision, the Supreme Court today declined to rule on whether key elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act were constitutional.
Instead, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court made it easier for some local jurisdictions to bail out of Section 5 of the law, which mandates Justice Department approval for any changes in voting procedures in the nine states and portions of another seven covered by the law.
The court, in an 8-1 vote, left the constitutional question for another day, writing, "The constitutional question has attracted ardent briefs from dozens of interested parties, but the importance of the question does not justify our rushing to decide it. Quite the contrary: Our usual practice is to avoid the unnecessary resolution of constitutional questions."
Today's ruling is a victory for residents of a small Texas municipal district had argued that the Voting Rights Act -- created in 1965 to protect minorities in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination -- is archaic and should be abolished.
Some residents of the community of 3,500 were infuriated because they had to spend two months and hundreds of dollars in legal fees just to move a polling place from a garage to a school. They said they supported the broader goals of the Voting Rights Act but believed Section 5 should be scrubbed.
"The America that has just elected Barack Obama is not the same America that existed when Section 5 was put into place," Gregory S. Coleman, an attorney for the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District, told ABC News in a recent interview.
Coleman contended that the district is suing the government because Congress was wrong to reauthorize key sections of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.
"At some point you have to say we've come far enough. Why do we and the other affected jurisdictions have to have the federal government looking over our shoulder," Coleman said.
In his opinion Roberts acknowledged that the "historical accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act are undeniable" but that "Members of this Court" have expressed "serious misgivings about the constitutionality of section 5."
