Shelby County, Alabama v. Erich. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, Dissenting Opinion
JUSTICE GINSBURG, with JUSTICE BREYER, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, and JUSTICE KAGAN
On June 25 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruled that sections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 were unconstitutional. The VRA was enacted to address racial discrimination in voting, but the Court held that the VRA contradicted the spirit of the 10th Amendment. The 10th Amendment reserves all powers—not granted to the Federal Government—for the states. The majority of justices held that VRA required states to ask the Federal Government for permission to enact laws they should have the right to enact.
Several justices, in the minority, wrote a dissent—or disagreeing position—to this opinion. An excerpt of that dissent is offered below.
Dissent
"[V]oting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that." Ante, at 2. But the Court today terminates the remedy that proved to be best suited to block that discrimination. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) has worked to combat voting discrimination where other remedies had been tried and failed. Particularly effective is the VRA's requirement of federal preclearance for all changes to voting laws in the regions of the country with the most aggravated records of rank discrimination against minority voting rights.
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, in the wake of the Civil War. It provides that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," and it gives Congress the "power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
"The first century of congressional enforcement of the Amendment, however, can only be regarded as a failure." (Id., at 197.) In the 1890s, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia began to enact literacy tests for voter registration and to employ other methods designed to prevent African-Americans from voting. (Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 310.) Congress passed statutes outlawing some of these practices. And the States came up with new ways to discriminate as soon as existing ones were struck down. Voter registration of African-Americans barely improved. (Id., at 313–314.)
After a century's failure to fulfill the promise of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, passage of the VRA finally led to signal improvement on this front.
Although the VRA brought dramatic changes in minority voting rights, the Act surely has not eliminated discrimination against the [voting rights of] minority citizens. [States] continued to submit proposed changes to voting laws that the Attorney General declined to approve, [predicting] that barriers to minority voting would quickly resurface.
Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court's opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story. Without even identifying a standard of review, the Court dismissively brushes off arguments based on "data from the record," and declines to enter the "debate about what the record shows." One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation's signal piece of civil-rights legislation.
Cornell University Law School: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-96#writing-12-96_DISSENT_5
According to Ginsberg's dissent, how did the Court fail in its decision to overturn the VRA? (5 points)
[It] required states to ask the Federal Government for permission to enact laws
It provides that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
It gives Congress the "power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
It relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story
