SCOTUS Ponders Killing VRA
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/02/27/supreme-court-voting-rights-south-blacks-discrimination/1949719/
The nation's most revered civil rights law emerged from a Supreme Court oral argument in critical condition Wednesday, putting existing remedies to voting discrimination in the South and some other states in danger of being declared unconstitutional.
The conservative justices who hold a slim majority on the court expressed grave doubts that the landmark law can remain intact when its most powerful section is based on a formula devised by Congress nearly a half-century ago.
Should the court rule 5-4 this spring against Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires all or parts of 16 states to clear all voting changes with the federal government, it would silence a weapon used as recently as last year to beat back photo ID laws, redistricting plans and restrictions on early voting.
Fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. Can we advocate for violence yet, or will that still get me zinged? How long is this shit gonna last? Because I seriously cannot take much more of this. God damn, I want to explode. Seriously? Are they really gonna do this? Are we going down this road? Where the fuck is everyone who's supposed to be pissed off about this? Those fucking states lost their rights when they started a god damned war and caused the country to rip itself apart so they could keep their slaves. Forever and anon. Really struggling not to go over the line and say something fucked up here.
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No you can't. Literally nothing has happened yet.
*If Scalia wasn't a blatantly corrupt and partisan cryptofascist?
I mean read Scalia's argument against it:
First of all, which societies is he talking about that had a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" unless he's talking about Jim Crowe itself? He's talking out of his ass.
Second, that's explicitly a political concern not a legal one.
The Court doesn't have the authority to say "we don't like this law, so fuck it." That's all Scalia is saying. "This law is incredibly popular and I don't like it so the only way to get rid of it is to say its Unconstitutional."
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"It wasn't *really* constitutional back then. They said it was, but they were wrong. So says Scalia. So say we all."
Could it be argued that whatever need that was present then is no longer now?
It's not that the Constitution necessarily changed, but rather that the circumstances warranting whatever policy that would otherwise be unconstitutional changed. We allow restrictions of basic rights, for instance, provided a compelling need is demonstrated and the law in question is properly tailored to that need. So if either the need subsides, or the landscape changes such that the law is no longer properly tailored to the need, what was once constitutional could become unconstitutional.
Not sure how this applies to the VRA, if at all. But in general.
So do we have to rely on Kennedy again now? God damn it.
-Racism isn't tied to the soil.
-GOP has shown that some will fuck others out of the vote for having what the deem the wrong opinion.
-Might finally get the ball rolling on moving all districting out of state legislators and into the hands of non-partisan boards (given how half assed it is, that it's a major conflict of interest, this should have happened long ago).
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Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
It means that from a originalist perspective the VRA is exactly what the writers of the 15th wanted the federal government to do. To have congress pass laws that prevent citizens being denied rights by the states, preemptively if necessary. They obviously didn't want the same court that gave us Dred Scott to be the deciding factor.(the 15th was passed in 1869).
People literally died for the right to vote.
Am I crazy to think that there will be serious consequences if they strike down the VRA?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
From what I heard on NPR, basically they recently(2006) tried to cut out the only African American member on the county(?) board during redistricting without even informing him of it.
Plenty of areas have gotten off the list by not discriminating.
A call to violence is never appropriate. But I am totally in the non-violent resistance camps so...
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I have heard people make exactly that point before, arguing that over the last fifteen years, the US DOJ has raised issue with less than 1% of all legislative changes dealing with electoral law in preclearance jurisdictions. In the point of view of those who argue in favor of repealing part or all of the VRA, that the DOJ must actively enforce the law but rarely is proof that the law is unnecessary.
That's obviously bullshit, of course. That the overwhelming majority of districts do now attempt to actively comply with federal law is no basis for speculation as to how they might have behaved if the law didn't exist.
I hope I'm wrong, but I still wonder if that last bit could be construed as "Undermining States Rights". It's been a while since I had a look at the books, but doesn't the law say something to the effect of "The States shall make arrangements for elections"? Could be interpreted as "Only The States".
Now I'm sad that I thought of the possibility that this line could be taken. Goddamnit.
Nevertheless, fuck Scalia. I hope the law is upheld and this idea of his is forced to crawl back into the damp and moldy underdark whence it came.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
I think the last few years of Obama have been an object lesson that any hope that we've "moved past" racism is wishful thinking. Living in the South, one of the more disturbing trends that's come up since Bush II is a much more full-throated embrace of racism from conservatives.
One thing Fox News and the other conservative media is retaught conservatives to be proud of their racism, after a few decades of hiding it. It's such a part of the conservative identity at this point that I take any conservative who claims not be racist to be either lying or the equivalent of a Log Cabin Republican.
It shouldn't be the first response, but it should definitely be an available option when someone is trying to disenfranchise you. When you're not allowed to vote, smashing the place up is one of the most effective methods of political discourse. But I am totally in the Wat Tyler/Captain Swing camps so...
It's funny, but even Gandhi didn't promote the abandonment of violence. In fact, it was always the veiled threat with him.
One of the forgotten brilliant truths about Gandhi was that he mastered the ability to make a peaceful march seem threatening. When thousands of Indians sat unmoving as British troops walked among them beating them during the Salt Marches, Gandhi was the first to point out that the power and will of a people who could endure such abuse silently would be terrible if they decided to raise their hands.
There's a difference between it being known violence is an option on the table and openly threatening violence when nothing has yet actually happened to provoke it.
The part they're specifically looking at is the bit which says "If you're one of these states, you need approval before enacting any new voting laws".
The reason why they're looking at it is because the question has been raised through the various channels "Why *THESE* states? Why not the other states?"
The rebuttal has come forward "Because there are still a lot of racist geese out there".
Now... discuss with less hyperbole!
The fact is, it should apply to all states equally.
But the way to implement that is not to get rid of pre-clearance. It's to expand it.
Pennsylvania isn't currently covered and it's pretty clear they should be, for example.
No. This is the Roberts Court. There's a very good chance that this narrow interpretation could be turned into a wholesale demolition of the VRA because "Fuck stare decisis!"
This court is really good at doing that.
It's very premature for anyone to start inciting that violence or acting on that violence. It should be a last resort, and the more it gets threatened the lower the threshold for that violence becomes.
Don't be those guys talking about how many ATF agents are going to die if they try to take our guns. That 'just saying' stuff is a threat, and it would be nice to be able to deal with real issues without people immediately falling back on violence.
For what it's worth, I think the provisions of the VRA should - definitely in any Federal Election or elections that would have bearing on Federal Elections (such as State Legislatures that control Federal districts...) should be expanded to cover all districts. The south is bad, but there are plenty of other places that are bad as well.
And that argument is bullshit with how they present it. They pointed out other states have enacted shitty legislation and that should mean they too should be able to enact shitty legislation. See how stupid that sounds? It's like a robbery suspect saying "Other people get away with robbing people, so I should be let go."
Shelby County also could have gotten bailed out of this provision as other counties have, if they you know stopped being discriminatory, but as of 2008 they tried to redistrict the one black councilman out of existence! So progressive of them.
On top of all that the VRA in its entirety was up for a vote in the house and senate in 2006 it passed the house with very few nays, and the senate with none, and was signed by GWB. Scalia argues we should throw out that vote because politicians are afraid to vote against minorities, how is that a fucking argument against legislation that does not violate the constitution and was voted in almost unanimously by the people's representatives?
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Scalia's basically an old man watching Fox News and yelling at the TV at this point. The only difference is that he's also a sitting Supreme Court judge.
That and a bunch of other factors like the high black population meaning there is going to be a lot of get out the vote efforts targeted at them by the political party they support. The high black turnout would in turn be a reason for those who would benefit from discrimination to pass laws targeting minorities.
Insert Belichick joke here.
Except Scalia is all about how the Constitution is a static document. If the VRA was Constitutional in 1965, according to his paradigm it should be Constitutional now. Otherwise, its an outcome based approach that he supposedly abhors.
But even under living document theories, the challenge is bogus. If the Congress has authority to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments through appropriate legislation - which it explicitly does - then unless another Constitutional limit is applied Section 5 is applicable. Congress reviewed a large amount of evidence to justify the extension of the VRA including Section 5. That means that its not the Court's place to judge whether or not the law is a good law or not. Its their job to determine whether there is any rational basis for linking the legislation to the stated power. And there clearly is.
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