Uncovering the Voting Rights Act: The Racial Progress Argument in Shelby County

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Darby
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
Racial Progress

scholarly journals FEDERALISM, SUBSIDIARITY, AND VOTING RIGHTS: CRITIQUING THE SHELBY COUNTY DECISION THROUGH JOHANNES ALTHUSIUS AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171
Author(s):  
Jonathan Rothchild
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Felon Disenfranchisement ◽  
Voter Identification ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Basic Features

AbstractThis article develops a legal and theological critique of the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision that dismantled portions of the Voting Rights Act. Defending the Voting Rights Act in light of four basic features of voting rights—access, participation, empowerment, and expression of conscience—I refute the Shelby decision in terms of its oversimplified notions of discrimination and its overly narrow construal of federalism as state sovereignty and equality. I draw upon Catholic social teaching's subsidiarity and Johannes Althusius's federalism to defend the individual and communal dimensions of voting rights. I examine post-Shelby developments, including voter-identification laws, and I argue that such laws are unfounded and have deleterious effects. I conclude by offering modest recommendations for a post-Shelby world, including continued roles for Congress and the Department of Justice, the use of intermediary organizations, and the rescinding of felon disenfranchisement laws.

After the Voting Rights Act

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas A. Powe
Keyword(s):  
Attorney General ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Voter Identification ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
The One ◽  
Voter Fraud ◽  
Voter Id ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the legal battles over the issue on voting rights in Texas. The Voting Rights Act, with its preclearance requirements for the South, was adopted in 1965 and reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. A few days after the 2006 reauthorization, the municipal utility district (MUD), created in Austin, Texas, in the 1980s, sued the U.S. attorney general, claiming that it should be allowed the advantage of the “bailout” (from preclearance) provisions of the Act. Edward Blum was the man behind the lawsuit. The chapter examines the MUD case and the one that followed it, Shelby County v. Holder. It also considers the efforts of Republicans to prevent voter fraud in the state through voter identification, resulting in SB 14, or voter ID bill, in the Texas Senate.

Moving Forward or Backsliding: A Causal Inference Analysis of the Effects of the Shelby Decision in North Carolina

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 649-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Suzanne Gibson
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Secondary Effects ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Democratic Vote ◽  
The Impact

The Voting Rights Act created a method of oversight called “preclearance,” which was designed to prevent changes in state and local voting laws that may negatively affect minority groups. Following the ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, however, preclearance is no longer enforced. This study assesses the impact of recently implemented local voting restrictions on turnout across various demographic and political subgroups in North Carolina. Unlike other states, preclearance in North Carolina was implemented at the county level. Two approaches to the regression discontinuity-design are used to estimate de facto minority disenfranchisement. This study finds that the removal of Section 5 preclearance negatively affected Democratic primary turnout, but did not affect Democratic vote share. Secondary effects resulting in the removal of Section 5 preclearance may be responsible for disproportionately lower levels of overall turnout in formerly covered counties in 2016. Ultimately, the data suggest minimal effects on minority turnout rates.

THE LAST STAND?

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond S. King ◽  
Rogers M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
To Come ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn 2013, the United States Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The ruling is part of longstanding efforts to maintain American institutions that have provided wide-ranging benefits to White citizens, including disproportionate political power. Over time, such efforts are likely to fail to prevent significant increases in political gains for African Americans, Latinos, and other minority citizens. But they threaten to foster severe conflicts in American politics for years to come.

Voter Purges After Shelby

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 687-692
Author(s):  
Catalina Feder ◽  
Michael G. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
First Time ◽  
Election Laws ◽  
The U.S

In Shelby County v. Holder (570 U.S. 529 (2013)), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “coverage formula” in Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that determined which jurisdictions had to presubmit changes in their election policies for federal approval. This ruling allowed covered counties full control over their election laws for the first time in 40 years. We engage the question of whether counties that had previously been “covered” purged voters at a higher rate than noncovered counties after the coverage formula was struck down. We find increases in purge rate of between 1.5 and 4.5 points in formerly covered jurisdictions post- Shelby, compared with counties that had not been subject to preclearance. Most of the increase came immediately, as the effect in 2014 is substantively and significantly higher than that in 2016. These findings suggest that while counties may have aggressively purged voters in 2014—the first election after the coverage formula’s demise—they may have tempered this behavior thereafter.

The Voting Rights Act's Pre-Clearance Provisions: The Experience of Native Americans in South Dakota

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Reith Schroedel ◽  
Joey Torres ◽  
Andrea Walters ◽  
Joseph Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
South Dakota ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
The State ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shelby County

During the 1965 debates over the Voting Rights Act, there are only two brief mentions of Native Americans. During the Act's 1975 renewal, Native Americans were mentioned only with respect to their inclusion under the minority language provisions. At no point did the applicability of Section 5's pre-clearance provisions to political jurisdictions with histories of discrimination against Native Americans generate discussion. They also were ignored in the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, where Section 4(b) that established the criteria for establishing Section 5 covered jurisdictions was found to be unconstitutional. In this paper, we examine struggles over Section 5 pre-clearance in South Dakota, as well as the challenges of legal attempts to establish “covered jurisdictions” using the more stringent standard required in Section 2. We focus on South Dakota because it is a state with a long, troubled history of discrimination towards Native peoples. It also is the state with the highest number of voting rights cases involving Native Americans. Although a state that has been labeled “the Mississippi of the North” is an extreme case, we argue that it is precisely those settings that make pre-clearance so critical.

In and Out of Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Brandzel
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Baby Girl ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Shelby County

This chapter uses the Supreme Court decisions that were announced in June of 2013 to showcase the anti-intersectionalities of citizenship and the ways in which anti-intersectionality functions through temporality. While many gays, lesbians, and their allies celebrated two decisions (United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry) for upholding same-sex marriage rights, indigenous and antiracist activists, scholars, and allies bemoaned the decisions that dismantled the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder), delimited affirmative action programs (Fisher v. University of Texas), and eroded indigenous sovereignty (Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl). The cases elucidate the ways in which the temporality of racialized discrimination has been used to dismantle racial reparations and indigenous rights, while simultaneously being used to grant gays and lesbians a limited form of membership into the exclusive rights of citizenship. In this way, these cases demonstrate how differently devalued and valued subjects are marked as in and out of time, and in the process, subjected to the temporal violence of normative citizenship.

Disenfranchisement and Economic Inequality: Downstream Effects of Shelby County v. Holder

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 161-165
Author(s):  
Abhay P. Aneja ◽  
Carlos F. Avenancio-León
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Downstream Effects ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
The Government ◽  
Public Workers

The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) is considered by many to be the most effective civil rights law ever passed. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down important provisions from the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder. This paper first discusses how the potential weakening of minority political power brought about by Shelby County may have made the government less responsive to minorities' policy demands. Then we proceed to show that the lack of minority power is already producing economic inequality that is reflected in public-sector wages and in private-sector occupations with a high number of public workers.

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