NAACP Rallies Supreme Court to Defend Voting Right Act
WASHINTON, DC—The NAACP, civil rights leaders, and activists from across the country recently rallied the United States Supreme Court’s review of the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. The case questions the constitutionality of a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act.
In April 2010, Shelby County, Alabama, a largely white suburb of Birmingham, filed suit in federal court in Washington, DC asking that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act be declared unconstitutional. The county asserts that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority in 2006 when it reauthorized Section 5 for another 25 years.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – first passed in 1965 – requires that certain states and localities, primarily in the South and Southwest, obtain “preclearance” for all proposed changes to voting laws, thus giving the Department of Justice the ability to block discriminatory laws before they are enacted in states or sections of states with an egregious history of voter suppression. To obtain preclearance, a jurisdiction must demonstrate that the change neither has a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect.
Attorney General Eric Holder is the named defendant in the case, and other Shelby County residents also have also intervened as defendants; they are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU Voting Rights Project.
“This case comes on the heels of an election year in which our nation witnessed the greatest assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. “Section 5 is the heart of the VRA. Shelby County v. Holder threatens to erode the essential protections that Section 5 provides for all Americans.”
“Forty-seven years of partial relief is hardly sufficient,” said Rev. Dr. William Barber, President of the NAACP North Carolina State Conference. “We must remain vigilant and protect the Voting Rights Act now more than ever to insure protection against every attempt to steal, stifle, and suppress the power and potential of the black vote.”
In addition to defending the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court, NAACP leaders will work with states and local officials to pass laws to expand voting rights, including same- day registration and voting, extended early voting, and restoring voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.
