Source: https://www.pulj.org/the-roundtable/voting-rights-and-the-supreme-court
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:21:47+00:00

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In fairness to Southerners, most insist that the ID laws were intended to target Democrats. Under this theory, any discrimination that results from these laws is based purely on partisanship, not race, and is therefore nominally constitutional. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the Court’s handiwork, the main purpose of the decision was to vindicate state sovereignty against federal interference in local election matters.
This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The Supreme Court’s resolution of Harris v. Arizona IndependentRedistricting Commission, a case scheduled for argument during the October term, could drastically intensify Shelby County’s effect on American election law.  Here is the problem: in 2010, prior to Shelby County, several states redrew their congressional and state districting maps. In order to prevent the Justice Department from denying preclearance to their new maps under §5 of the VRA, several southern and southwestern states (including Arizona) had to create multiple districts where African-Americans, Hispanics, or Native Americans had a more than likely chance of electing their candidate of choice.  The result was that several state legislative districting maps deviated from perfect population equality because the district drawers wanted to create compact and contiguous districts, respect communities of interest, and comply with §5. In the past, the Court has held that deviations from perfect population equality are more tolerable in state maps as opposed to maps setting out congressional districts so long as there are legitimate reasons for the inequality.
Now that the Court has gutted §5, Arizona Republicans, angry that the current plan only gives them a slight partisan advantage, are challenging the plan’s constitutionality on the grounds that the population inequality resulting from compliance with §5 automatically invalidates the map. There are two reasons why the Arizona Republicans should lose on this issue. First, §5 compliance was not the only cause of the population inequality; thus, the fact that it was one consideration that the map drawers took into account does not, on its own force, run afoul of prior precedent that prevented unreasonable differences in state district populations. More importantly, given that the purpose of Shelby County was to champion state sovereignty, it would be ironic if the Court invalidated the Arizona plan drawn to avoid federal interference in election matters. In the interim, we can only hope that five individuals in the marble palace appreciate the difference.
 “Voting Rights Act - Black History,” HISTORY.com, accessed April 7, 2016, http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act.
 Updated: June 25 and 2013, “Areas Covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” The Washington Post, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/section-five-voting-rights-act-map/.
 Joel William Friedman, Champion of Civil Rights: Judge John Minor Wisdom (LSU Press, 2009).
 F. Sensenbrenner, “H.R.9 - 109th Congress (2005-2006): Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006,” legislation, (July 27, 2006), https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/9.
 “Shelby County v. Holder,” SCOTUSblog, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/shelby-county-v-holder/.
 “Key Provision Of Voting Rights Act Struck Down By Supreme Court,” The Huffington Post, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_3429810.html.
 Kara Brandeisky, Hanqing Chen, Mike Tigas, “Everything That’s Happened Since Supreme Court Ruled on Voting Rights Act,” ProPublica, November 4, 2014, http://www.propublica.org/article/voting-rights-by-state-map.
 “Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission,” SCOTUSblog, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/harris-v-arizona-independent-redistricting-commission/.
 “State Legislative and Congressional Redistricting after the 2010 Census - Ballotpedia,” accessed April 8, 2016, https://ballotpedia.org/State_Legislative_and_Congressional_Redistricting_after_the_2010_Census.
 “Semantic Scholar,” accessed April 8, 2016, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/An-Assessment-of-the-Bailout-Provisions-of-the-Hebert/be513f890eb56ac5f8e521905968ea6dfa0fb24f.

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