Out-of-Touch Supreme Court Justices Gut Voting Rights Act

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act which requires some states and localities to get federal clearance before making any changes to their voting laws.

According to Huffington Post:

Chief Justice John Roberts who was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that “things have changed dramatically” in the South in the nearly 50 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965.

The court’s opinion said it did not strike down the act of Congress “lightly,” and said it “took care to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act” in a separate case back in 2009. “Congress could have updated the coverage formula at that time, but did not do so. Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare [Section 4] unconstitutional. The formula in that section can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote a scathing dissenting opinion, accused her conservative counterparts of displaying “hubris” in striking down a key portion of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1986.  She wrote that Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito were displaying judicial activism and had lost touch with reality in saying that “pre-clearance” provision of the law don’t apply today.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan, joined Ginsburg in her dissent.

Closer to home, the League of Women Voters of Florida said in a statement that, the striking down of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a “major setback for voting rights today.”

“It should be disturbing to every Florida voter that the Supreme Court seems not to have noticed what happened in Florida over the last two years, where we have battled the legislature’s partisan manipulation of our voting rights,” said Deirdre Macnab, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “Today’s decision undermines 40 years of fundamental protections against discriminatory voting laws and the League urges Congress to act quickly to restore the Voting Rights Act.”

The League added that the Voting Rights Act was just as vital in last year’s elections as it was in 1965, and continues to serve as a critical tool in preventing voter discrimination on the basis of race.

Florida has 5 counties that required preclearance from the federal government, namely, Hillsborough, Hendry, Hardee, Monroe and Collier.