#Courts slur root out racism clerk series

When the case reached the US supreme court, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority ruled in favor of Texas without comment. The state appealed to the fifth circuit, pleading with the judges to not dismantle the voter ID law because it would be too disruptive to the looming midterm election in 2014. Within two hours of that decision, Texas implemented a voter ID law that led district court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to rule that the new measure not only had a discriminatory effect, it also had a discriminatory intent. The Shelby County v Holder (2013) decision ended the most powerful tool in the VRA’s wheelhouse, pre-clearance, and allowed states and jurisdictions with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to implement laws and election policies without the prior approval of the US Department of Justice or the federal court in Washington DC. The Roberts court’s assault on the VRA and the 15th amendment has been relentless and brutal to American democracy. The Roberts court, however, bears no resemblance to the one in the 1960s and has all the anti-voting rights earmarks of the court after the civil war. Two crucial decisions buttressed the VRA, noting that it was not only constitutional but also created to deal with “ the subtle, as well as the obvious, state regulations which have the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of race”.

And, this time, in the late 1960s, the US supreme court came down on the side of democracy and the 15th amendment. The legislature passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which would save America from its worst self. It took the blood, the courage and the martyrdom of civil rights workers combined with the political spine of a president and congressional leaders to break this stranglehold on the right to vote. In Mississippi a mere 6.7% of eligible Black adults were registered to vote. By 1960, there were counties in Alabama that had no Black voters registered, while simultaneously having more than 100% of white age-eligible voters on the rolls. This assault on African Americans’ right to vote was an assault on American democracy aided and abetted by the highest court in the land. In a 1903 case out of Alabama, Giles v Harris, the supreme court determined that it was powerless to stop a state from disfranchising Black voters even if the methods were unconstitutional. The court ruled, despite this crude and brazen denial of his right to vote, that the 15th amendment “ does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one”.Īs states then began fully implementing Jim Crow legislation to disfranchise African Americans, the court, in the Williams v Mississippi (1898) decision, looked at the poll tax and the literacy test and ruled that those chokepoints to the ballot box – which had already removed 90% of registered Black voters in Mississippi from the rolls – did not violate the 15th amendment. He tried to pay his poll tax, which was required to vote, but the tax collector refused to accept the payment and the registrars would not allow him to cast a ballot without payment. In 1876, United States v Reese et al dealt with a Black man who was trapped in a malicious catch-22 that prevented him from voting. The 1874 Minor v Happersett ruling asserted that the right to vote was not part and parcel of American citizenship. Focusing on voting rights gives some indication of how pernicious the decisions were.

#Courts slur root out racism clerk series

In a series of decisions in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries, however, the supreme court systematically dismantled those protections, as well as others crafted to support African Americans’ citizenship rights and defend against white domestic terrorism waged by the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations. After the civil war, Congress passed the 1867 Reconstruction Act, which provided that Black men had the right to vote, and then Congress followed that with the 15th amendment, which banned states from using race, color or previous conditions of servitude to undermine the right to vote.