Witnesses Say Redistricting Case Limits the Effectiveness of the VRA
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 11/16/2005
This story is the fourth in a series on Congress' hearings on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.The impact of a recent decision that redefined the standard for assessing discrimination under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was the topic of the November 9 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of the VRA's expiring provisions.
Under the Supreme Court's decision in Beer v. United States (1976), courts and the Department of Justice have assessed whether a voting change makes the minority community worse off, in the context of redistricting, by looking to whether the change in question would reduce the ability of minority voters to elect their candidates of choice.
However, in Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003), a bare 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court suddenly abandoned the Beer standard and replaced it with one that would allow states to trade minority "opportunity" districts for those that offer minority voters "influence" in the political process--a standard that many voting rights experts believe is vague and ill-defined.
At the November 9 hearing, witnesses testified to the need for Congress to make clear their intention to return to the standard articulated in Beer, citing examples of how Ashcroft will erode the gains made by minorities and enable discrimination to increase.
Ashcroft invites vote dilution, according to Theodore M. Shaw, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who also testified about the difficulty in administering a discrimination test that rests on so-called "influence" districts. "The new retrogression standard allows a jurisdiction to decide whether or not it will protect hard-won minority political gains and opportunities to elect candidates of their choosing," said Shaw.
"Because Georgia v. Ashcroft permits a jurisdiction to choose among different theories of minority political representation...it introduces a substantial element of uncertainty for minority communities into a statutory scheme that was specifically intended to block persistent and shifting efforts to limit the effectiveness of minority political participation," Shaw said.
Some committee members raised questions about the need to protect the opportunity for minority voters to elect candidates of choice, with some suggesting that so-called "influence" district might be an adequate substitute.
Laughlin McDonald, director of the Voting Rights Project of the ACLU, submitted testimony that Ashcroft relegates minorities to "second-class voters, who can 'influence' the election of white candidates, but who cannot amass the political power necessary to elect a candidate of choice who they believe will represent their interests"
Civil rights advocates also cite the continued prevalence in the South and Southwest of racial bloc voting - where white and black voters consistently prefer different candidates -- as a reason for the need to protect opportunities for minorities to elect candidates of choice.
Tyrone Brooks, a Georgia state representative and president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials who was a member of the Georgia legislature when Ashcroft was decided, said that many who have looked at this question have "failed to take into account how extensive racial bloc voting is."
House Begins Hearings on Voting Discrimination and Reauthorization of the VRA
Witnesses Describe Effectiveness of Voting Rights Act
Focus of Voting Rights Act Hearings Switches to Threats Kept at Bay
