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markpkessinger

(8,381 posts)
Sat Mar 2, 2013, 05:18 PM Mar 2013

Link to integrated audio & transcript of Supreme Court oral argument in Voting Rights Act case

Last edited Sun Mar 3, 2013, 12:10 AM - Edit history (1)

This is an audio recording, along with a transcript, of the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, the case involving the Voting Rights Act that is now before the Court. Below the audio link, I've provided a little background on the case and some of my reactions.

(NOTE: click on "Expanded player," and you will see a rolling transcript which you can scroll through. You can click on any portion of text and select "Play" from the pop-up the appears. Or you can search for text, and in the search result window, click on a result and again select "Play." And there's a third tool: in the lower right-hand pane of the expanded player, you can select the buttons next to each speaker's name, and color-coded sections will appear on the audio progress bar showing where in the recording that speaker can be heard. It's really worth listening to the entire 75 minutes, though.)

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2012/2012_12_96/argument

Shelby County, Alabama, a predominantly white county with a long and troubled history of attempting to find ways of discouraging minority voters from exercising their right to vote, has asked the Court to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the section of the law dealing with enforcement measures designed to intercept instances of attempted voter suppression before they occur. Section 5 provides that voting districts in states that have a documented history of such attempts must clear any changes to their voting rules with the Federal Elections Commission. They can be released from such Federal oversight if they go for a period of 10 years without any attempts to change voting rules that are deemed by the FEC to be attempts to suppress minority participation in elections. Shelby County argues that the problem the Voting Rights Act sought to address has been resolved. They argue that the problem was specifically one of attempts to interfere with actual voting and/or voter registration. Since those specific issues have been addressed, the county argues, there is no longer a need for Federal oversight of changes to their voting rules, and continuing to be under such oversight represents an intrusion upon the state's sovereignty. They further argue that Section 2 of the Act, which provides citizens the right to sue if they have been discriminated against in the electoral process, is an adequate remedy, and that the prior oversight, again, is no longer necessary.

The counter argument (which is more borne out by the historical record, I might add), is that the problem the Act sought to address was not the specific tactics used to interfere with voting (i.e., literacy tests as a condition of voter registration), but was rather the larger problem of attempted discrimination in general in the rules governing voter participation (i.e., last-minute changes in the locations of polling places, severely restricted voting hours, etc. -- indeed, many of the tactics we saw in the most recent election cycle), and that since such attempts are still occurring, Section 5 is still very much needed. The counter argument contends, correctly I believe, that the reason the problems are not occurring in Alabama today are _because_ Section 5 continues to work. They point out that Alabama has continued to have many proposed rule changes that have been successfully challenged under Section 5, which would indicate that attempts to discriminate are still very much in play. As for Shelby County's suggestion that Section 2 ex post facto litigation is a sufficient remedy, the counter argument is that federal litigation is prohibitively expensive and thus out of reach for many voters who might be discriminated against, and that in order to ensure that people's ability to exercise their right to vote is honored, it is important to head off discriminatory practice before they occur.

One thing that really struck me as I listened the various justices as they questioned the lawyers. The conservatives, Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy (Thomas, as per usual, had nothing to say), all based their questions on abstract theoretical bases, whereas the liberals, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor, based their questions on what was actually happening on the ground. Abstract theory, of course, is a great way to shield oneself from what happens in real-world, practical application.

Scalia's comment that Section 5 creates a "racial entitlement" is possibly one of the most vile things I've ever heard a Supreme Court justice say. (ThinkProgress reported yesterday that in the lawyers' waiting room, which has a live audio feed to the proceedings, there were audible gasps when that comment was made.) Justice Roberts, quite disingenuously, suggests that the operative question is whether residents of southern states are more racist than those in northern states. That isn't the proper question at all. The proper question is whether the states that have been identified as falling under Section 5's federal oversight provisions have had a greater history of attempted voter discrimination than the states not so identified; and the answer to that is an unequivocal yes.

The questions and comments of Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan both stand out as exceptional, in my view, although Justices Ginsburg and Breyer are quite impressive as well. When I think of the racist and bigoted things that were said by right wingers during Justice Sotomayor's confirmation process impugning her intelligence, I find her performance here to be all the more gratifying.

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Link to integrated audio & transcript of Supreme Court oral argument in Voting Rights Act case (Original Post) markpkessinger Mar 2013 OP
This message was self-deleted by its author markpkessinger Mar 2013 #1

Response to markpkessinger (Original post)

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