Center for Equal Opportunity - CEO Gives Limited Praise to the Court's Limited Voting-Rights Ruling

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CEO Gives Limited Praise to the Court's Limited Voting-Rights Ruling

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Chavez and Clegg Look Forward to More “Bailout” Applications – and to More Constitutional Challenges

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(Falls Church, VA) The Center for Equal Opportunity announced there is good news in today’s Supreme Court decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. More jurisdictions will now be able to “bail out” from coverage of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which CEO had argued was unconstitutional. Indeed, said CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg, “The Court’s decision should be read as encouraging more jurisdictions to use the Act’s bailout provision.”

Clegg noted that CEO had joined an amicus brief challenging Section 5’s unconstitutionality as no longer factually justified. He said: “Section 5 is unconstitutional because it bans election practices that do not violate the Constitution, because it is extraordinarily intrusive in terms of federalism principles, and because it actually encourages government behavior that is unconstitutional, namely the racial segregation of voting districts through racial gerrymandering.”

CEO chairman Linda Chavez agreed, adding that it was “disappointing” that the Court today did not reach this question of Section 5’s underlying constitutionality. She said: “Justice Thomas (the only Justice to discuss the issue) is surely right that there is no longer a factual basis to support this statute.” She added: “But the door has been left open for future challenges – and not only to Section 5, by the way, but to an even more constitutionally dubious provision in the Voting Rights Act, namely its requirement that many jurisdictions print ballots and other election materials in foreign languages.”

Clegg concluded, “We look forward to these future challenges—and to the Court’s correct resolution of them.”

The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit research and educational organization that studies issues related to civil rights, bilingual education, and immigration and assimilation nationwide.

L-R: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Manhattan D.A. Robert Morganthau , Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, New Haven Firefighters Frank Ricci and Lt. Ben Vargas, attorney Peter N. Kirsanow, and Linda Chavez, chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity are sworn in before testifying on July 16, 2009 on the fourth day of confirmation hearings for US Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Chavez and Clegg Look Forward to More “Bailout” Applications – and to More Constitutional Challenges

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