Resolved: The Supreme Court rightly decided that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act violated the Con

In 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, finally guaranteeing the right of political participation promised to minorities by the 15th Amendment. For nearly fifty years the Voting Rights Act has prevented widespread racial discrimination. In 2006 a Republican House of Representatives renewed the bill on a 390-33 vote, and the Senate renewed it by a 98-0 vote. Last spring the Supreme Court struck down the most important part of the bill, Section 4 " on a 5-4 decision. Because that decision was a severe setback for equality in America, I negate the resolution. Resolved: The Supreme Court rightly decided that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act violated the Constitution. We have some definitions for today"s round: rightly - For this resolution, it means that the results or the potential results of the decision are good Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act - Southern states need to get approval before changing the way elections are held. Our standard is constitutionality. The team that can best uphold the Constitution should win this round. Now on to our points: C1: Southern racism is alive. Justice Ginsburg noted many examples of intentional discrimination " including a town in Georgia that, faced with a large number of black candidates for City Council, simply canceled the election. (http://www.motherjones.com...) Professor Sidney Rosdeitcher noted this year that: (http://www.brennancenter.org...) (By: Sidney Rosdeitcher) (January 3, 2014) "Respondents detail the extensive record of racially discriminatory voting practices in the covered jurisdictions before Congress, that they maintain demonstrate "current needs" for the preclearance provision. This record shows, they maintain, that since 1982, approximately 2400 discriminatory voting changes had been blocked by more than 750 Section 5 objections and that without Section 5 these voting changes could have been challenged only through case-by-case litigation, a system that would have resulted in years of discriminatory treatment of minority voters pending the outcome of those litigations and would have required an enormous expenditure of resources. IMPACT: Although the evidence talks about Section 5, it is still important because without Section 4, which provides the guidelines, Section 5, which provides the punishments, will be useless. The Court assumes violations don"t happen, but they do. With Section 4 abolished, these states are more likely to succeed. Since voting rights violations are in fact common, the federal government is constitutionally justified in continuing to use Section 4 to preserve equal protection. C2: New voter ID laws will be passed. Legal scholar Emma Greenman wrote on July 14, 2013 that: (http://www.wellstone.org...) (By: Emma Greenman) (July 14, 2013) "Take voter ID laws for starters. Until Shelby, Section 5 prevented covered states from implementing strict voter ID requirements that would depress minority turnout. Now freed of the federal government review, many of the formerly covered jurisdictions will go ahead with those laws to the determinant of minority voters. In fact, they already have. Hours after the ruling, Texas announced it is putting a strict voter ID law into effect. The law had been blocked by Section 5 because, as the D.C. federal court observed, it "imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty." And Texas is not alone. At last count, four more previously covered states are moving ahead with voter ID laws that will likely take effect before 2014 Congressional elections." IMPACT: Without Section 4, minorities can"t vote because states are going to pass these Voter ID laws, which are barriers to registration and to voting. This is exactly what Section 4 was enacted to stop. The Constitution means nothing if it does not promise equal protection. C3: Discriminatory gerrymandering, also called redistricting, will occur and violate rights. The New York Times reported on February 2, 2013 that: (http://www.nytimes.com...) (By: Sam Wang, The New York Times and associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, founder of the Princeton Election Consortium) (February 2, 2013) Normally we would expect more seats in Congress to go to the political party that receives more votes, but the last election confounded expectations. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. This is only the second such reversal since World War II...In North Carolina, where the two-party House vote was 51 percent Democratic, 49 percent Republican, the average simulated delegation was seven Democrats and six Republicans. The actual outcome? Four Democrats, nine Republicans " a split that occurred in less than 1 percent of simulations. If districts were drawn fairly, this lopsided discrepancy would hardly ever occur. IMPACT: As we can see, even with the increase of Democratic minorities, Republicans received the political benefits because of redistricting, which makes minority votes ineffective as they are grouped with a large, mostly Republican population. They don"t have an impact on elections. C4: Section 4 is constitutional because it protects the 14th and 15th amendments. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights said that: (http://www.lawyerscommittee.org...) (By: The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy) (2011) Congress has the power to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments by legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is an example of legislation passed by Congress to enforce the anti-discrimination voting guarantees of the 14th and 15th Amendments. IMPACT: The 14th and 15th Amendments explicitly state that Congress has the power to enforce laws that will protect voting rights. As we have proved before, Section 4 is important for minorities in the South. It protects their constitutional rights, and because of the harm that these people are now in, the Supreme Court"s decision was not right. For these reasons, we strongly urge a negative ballot.