Court decisions show new approach to voting rights cases

[DonViejo]

Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key elements of the Voting Rights Act, critics of Republican-led efforts to change voting laws in key states are scoring a new round of victories in courts across the country. The wave of favorable decisions, both proponents and opponents say, illustrates a new approach voting rights advocates are taking in court.

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that a part of the Voting Rights Act laying out criteria under which states could be required to seek approval prior to changing voting laws was outdated. The decision effectively rendered moot Section 5, which required states fitting that criteria to seek approval from the Justice Department or the D.C. District Court prior to changing election laws.

In effect, voting rights advocates worried, the Supreme Court had shifted the burden of proof from the states, which previously had to show their proposed changes would not discriminate against minority voters, to the voters themselves, who would now have to show their rights were infringed upon. But recent decisions from federal courts show voting rights advocates are taking a new approach to litigation over voting rights cases — and it’s an approach that seems to be working.

In just the past two weeks, state and federal district and circuit court judges have struck down voter identification laws and other measures changing voting rules in North Carolina, Kansas, Wisconsin and Texas. Earlier this year, a federal district court also ruled against a plan to curtail early voting in Ohio. Each case challenged existing law under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents states from implementing practices or procedures meant to deny or abridge someone’s right to vote on the basis of race.

“What we’re seeing now out of Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina is an evolution of the Voting Rights Act,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who has testified as an expert witness in voting rights cases. “Plaintiffs are now having to use Section 2 as a way to overturn laws that would have likely been prevented from going into effect because they would have failed to earn pre-approval under Section 5.”

-snip-

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/290698-court-decisions-show-new-approach-to-voting-rights-cases

[Igel]

1. It's basically what everybody said would happen.

Well, except the "VRA is gutted" folk. If you want to say somebody's guilty, you prove it. You don't assume that what held true 50 years ago is still true.

Apparently, though, there should be an asymmetry in the law. It's unconscionable for groups with limited means to have to sue the state, with it's vitually unlimited fund of tax dollars (?). However, I strongly suspect that if the state brought a suit against a group with limited means the state's virtually unlimited fund of tax dollars would be a grand a glorious strike for fairness.

Fair. adj. 1. free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair verdict. 2. wholly favoring my bias and avoiding anything I personally consider to show injustice ... to me: a fair verdict.

I wonder how it's defined in the Pierce's Devil's Dictionary ... But upon checking, t'is lacking.