Appeals Court Hobbles The Voting Rights Act In New Decision
A divided federal appellate panel took a pipe to the knees of the Voting Rights Act Monday, handing down an eyebrow-raising decision that would severely curtail the effectiveness of the landmark civil rights law.
Two of the judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel — one appointed by Donald Trump and one by George W. Bush — ruled that individuals can no longer bring lawsuits under the VRA. They assert that only the U.S. attorney general can bring enforcement actions under the law.
If the decision holds, VRA cases would nosedive even under Democratic administrations due to limited resources, and would likely stop completely under Republican ones. Currently, voting rights organizations usually collaborate with individual voters to bring VRA claims, one of the last tools with which to challenge gerrymandering on the federal level.
Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, another Bush appointee, dissented and would have preserved the private right of action under the VRA.
The case originated as a VRA lawsuit brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel alleging racial gerrymandering in the map dividing the districts for the Arkansas House of Representatives. It names state officials, including Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), as defendants.
Appeals Court Hobbles The Voting Rights Act In New Decision
A divided federal appellate panel took a pipe to the knees of the Voting Rights Act Monday, handing down an eyebrow-raising decision that would severely curtail the effectiveness of the landmark civil rights law.talkingpointsmemo.com
No need for using over the top descriptors like jack booted thugs are coming for the rights of minority voters. The erosion of voting rights is happening right out in the open by distinguished looking folks in black robes.
Section 2 governs vote dilution in redistricting — where states, usually red ones, pack minority voters into one district or spread them out so their voting power is diffused — and is the most effective tool left to fight racial gerrymandering in federal court. Nearly all of these cases are brought by “private litigants,” often good government groups plus a handful of individual voters in the targeted area.
Earlier this week, David Stras, an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and fellow Trump appointee, enthusiastically echoed Rudofsky’s reasoning in a decision dripping with disdain for voting rights groups (in which he was joined by Judge Raymond Gruender, a George W. Bush appointee). Both Stras and Gruender had appeared on the shortlist for Supreme Court candidates during the Trump administration.
“Quarreling over district lines begins like clockwork every ten years after the United States Census,” Stras eyerolled, sniping that the advocacy groups fighting what they claimed was a gerrymandered Arkansas House map had “sued nearly everyone who had anything to do with it under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”
Stras and Gruender agreed with Rudofsky that individuals couldn’t sue under Section 2. In fact, they wrote, only the U.S. attorney general could.
“Literally hundreds of Section 2 cases have been filed over the past several decades, and hundreds of federal judges have ruled on the merits in these cases without blinking an eye,” Travis Crum, a voting rights expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in Saint Louis, told TPM. “But two judges on the 8th Circuit decided that these hundreds of other judges had just missed the issue for decades.”
Trump Judges Decimate Voting Rights Act After Supreme Court Bat Signal
Trump judges eagerly seized on Gorsuch and Thomas’ bat signal and decimated the Voting Rights Act, a decision that would unleash chaos if let stand.talkingpointsmemo.com
If you are looking for evidence of "activist judges" conservatives are always railing about.......look no further.
What it will do is reduce the frivolous law suits. If someone has a compelling case, they can take it to the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
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