Should U.S. Supreme Court Overturn Voting Rights Act As No longer Needed?
The images of vicious bombings that once littered the landscape of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s in America are now a distant memory. Cities like Birmingham, Alabama, which were at the epicenter and caught the brunt force of the segregationist fury to deprive black voters of their voting rights, have been replaced by a vast number of local and federal minority public officials throughout states and in congress. And of course we cannot forget the two time elected Barack Obama, as president!
So this week, as Shelby County, Alabama makes the case before the U.S. Supreme Court that the federal Voting Rights Act has seen its day and that Section Five should be overturned, the nation will be watching. Conservatives have long held that in states and localities like Shelby County where voting rights suppression no longer exists, it makes little legal or moral sense to continue to list a community as being engaged in racist voting practices where none exist.
In reality this case has much deeper significance for the other communities across the country which are also similarly weighted down with this federal mandate. The purpose of the bill is well intended and was needed in its day to protect the rights of minority voters who were systematically deprived of their constitutional right to vote.
Yet, in the 21st century, those same states which bore the mark of racism in their practices regarding minority voting rights no longer practice those tactics. So should they continue to be marred with the title and legal penalty?
That is essentially what Shelby County will present in its legal arguments before the justices of the Supreme Court. It is an argument which can be cross-tied with the similar Affirmative Action inequality which has burdened America more recently with imbalanced racial favoritism where racism may no longer exist.
There are many detractors on the left and in civil rights communities who have made a living off of falsely crying racism. Their behavior can be likened to the famous fictional Chicken Little character who claimed, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” Well if you remember the rest of the story, Chicken Little finally meets Foxey Loxey, who welcomes Chicken Little and Henny Penny into his den, and, “They never, never come out again.”
Well, this is what is happening to America with this law as well as with continued use of Affirmative Action application and enforcement. Much like Chicken Little, there are those liberal leaders like Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson and President Obama who insists the sky is still falling, and led America into the fox den, where justice and equality under the law for all Americans will never emerge again.
A central question that the court must answer is: when does justice arrive for all Americans if institutional injustice does not exist any longer? If racism in voting practices no longer exists, then what is being monitored?
Some civil rights officials on the left have attempted to use poverty, lack of jobs and even illegal immigration attitudes as an indication of why voting rights for minorities must continue to be monitored. This is a red herring that has no legal connection to the purpose and intent of Section Five of the Voting Rights Act.
The case in Shelby County, Alabama does bear witness to the fact that voting injustice, once wide ranging, is no longer present. Therefore, this law must not continue to be used as a hammer to pound local officials into submission for legal infractions that no longer exist.
If Shelby County and other communities across the nation have moved beyond any measurable discriminatory practices against minority voters, then the U.S. Justice Department has no alternative but to remove them from the list. The U.S. Supreme Court must instruct the justice department to do so.
In conclusion, the U.S. Supreme Court must move with all deliberate speed to put an end to this continued imbalance of equal justice for all Americans. Equal justice under the law does not mean more justice for some and less for others. The court must remove this law as a useful tool for liberals who seek office and want to drum up the ghosts of past injustices long buried.
Racism in America is not the issue of the 21st century. A united country where race is color neutral and justice and equality does not play favorites is what the bottom line must be for the nation. This is the conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court must arrive at in reaching a decision to overturn the law.