Constitutional Law

High Court Agrees To Hear Case Involving Crucial Voting Rights Act Provision

In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse says a case involving the extension of a central part of a federal voting rights law could “tell us more than almost any other about John G. Roberts Jr. and his evolution from spear carrier in the Reagan revolution to chief justice of the United States – and in the process set the direction of the debate over race and politics for years to come.”

The U.S. Supreme Court announced today it would review that case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Mukasey.

The case centers on whether Congress’s extension of a key provision, Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, was constitutional and whether local government entities must get federal clearance before altering their election and voting rights laws. Sec. 5 of the voting rights act was aimed at stopping states and local governments from discriminating against minority voters.

As noted by Greenhouse, a Republican-controlled Congress approved the 25-year extension of the voting rights act and a federal court upheld it last year. The U.S. Solicitor General, moreover, has urged the Supreme Court to uphold the federal court’s decision on the voting rights law.

Greenhouse maintains that the case will force the high court to reveal where it stands on cases dealing with race. Greenhouse writes:

The Roberts Court has not resumed the Rehnquist court’s federalism battles, and the chief justice’s own views are unclear. But he does not come as a novice to the debate over the Voting Rights Act. As a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, he wrote sharply worded memos on behalf of the administration’s failed effort to block expansion of the act in 1982. Confronted with his paper trail during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2005, he explained that he was simply expressing the administration’s views.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on January 09, 2009 (boomark / email).