In its most infamous decision, the Dred Scott case of 1857, the Supreme Court remarked that Blacks “had no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”
Today, America wonders whether Blacks — and other minorities — have any voting rights that the court’s present majority is bound to respect.
On July 1 the court upheld, 6 to 3, two features of Arizona law that have been proved to have disparate effects on Black, Hispanic and Native American voters in that state.
One generally forbids anyone but a letter carrier, election official or close relative to obtain or deliver absentee ballots for anyone else.
The other voids all ballots cast in the wrong precinct, even for statewide or national office.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
It appears the court is bent on eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, one of the nation’s most necessary laws, section by section.
Citizens could still sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts promised, because Section 2 of the law, allowing those after-the-fact lawsuits, remained in force.
But lawsuits are a slower and less certain remedy, and anyway, it’s a moot point now.
The decision set a precedent for allowing discriminatory effects despite Section 2 so long as they are “small,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote.
Arizona makes it “quite easy” to vote by mail, he added, rationalizing that “every voting rule imposes a burden of some sort.”
Evidence before lower courts showed that roughly 1% of the votes from Hispanics, Blacks and Native Americans in Arizona are discarded for being cast in the wrong precinct — a rate twice as high as among non-minorities.
All told, nearly 40,000 ballots were discarded for that reason. But to Alito and his accomplices, it is no big deal because the “racial disparity … is small in absolute terms.”
To deny even one person’s right to vote is to repudiate the Declaration of Independence, the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act itself.
Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, correctly described the outcome as “tragic” because the majority had effectively rewritten the law. “Efforts to suppress the minority vote continue … too many states and localities are restricting access to voting that will predictably deprive members of minority groups of equal access to the ballot box.”
As of July 1, those states can count on a reactionary majority of the Supreme Court to look the other way.