Race Bias In Obama Era Reaches Court That Seeks Colorblind U.s.
The court next week hears arguments on a decision by New Haven, Connecticut, to cancel planned firefighter promotions after no blacks scored well enough on two tests to qualify. A week later the justices will consider overturning part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The disputes offer the court a chance to make a sweeping pronouncement about U.S. race relations in the era of President Barack Obama. Both cases concern decades-old legal protections for minorities, with the election dispute directly questioning whether the country still needs procedures set up in the 1960s to protect southern black voters.
Obamas election “demonstrates that we are a different society than existed in the 50s and 60s,” said Gregory S. Coleman, a Texas lawyer who will argue for opponents of the Voting Rights Act provision on April 29. “It is a marker of the progress that we as a nation have made.”
Coleman will make his argument to a court that under Chief Justice John Roberts has sought to make the law more colorblind. The justices will review the requirement that officials in eight states and parts of eight others get Justice Department clearance before changing their district lines or voting procedures.
A Republican-controlled Congress in 2006 extended that requirement, known as Section 5, for 25 years. Then-President George W. Bush signed the measure into law.
Still Needed
“Congress carefully considered the question of whether we still need it and concluded that we do,” said Laughlin McDonald, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Voting Rights Project in New York. “The court in the past has always deferred to the judgment of Congress.”
McDonald points to research indicating that racial differences actually widened during the November election in states covered by Section 5. Nathaniel Persily, a political scientist and election-law professor at New Yorks Columbia Law School, said in court papers that Obama received only 26 percent of the white vote in those states, the same as fellow Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
Section 5 governs five southern states once rife with racism — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana — plus Texas, Alaska and Arizona, which are covered by a 1975 amendment protecting people who are primarily non- English speakers. Most of Virginia is also covered.
Upheld Four Times
The Supreme Court has upheld Section 5 four times as a legitimate means of enforcing the Constitutions 15th Amendment, which bars states from restricting voting on the basis of race.
He says the “gamesmanship” that prompted enactment of Section 5 — the southern practice of continually erecting barriers to thwart black voters — is now largely nonexistent.
“It stigmatizes these state and local officials by having Congress, without evidence, declare them to be no different from the people who sat in their chairs 40 years ago,” said Coleman, who also will argue on behalf of white and Hispanic firefighters denied promotion in New Haven.
The Obama administration is defending the voting law, saying the Justice Department has used Section 5 to stop 2,400 discriminatory changes since 1982.
“Section 5 continues to serve a critical role in achieving the still-elusive goal of eliminating racial discrimination in voting,” the administration argued.
Firefighter Suit
In the firefighter case, set for argument April 21, New Haven says the cancellations averted a lawsuit by black firefighters. The city says it concluded the tests did a poor job of measuring qualifications for the 17 new positions.
“The city merely declined to use the tests given substantiated concerns that such use would violate” the 1964 Civil Rights Act, New Haven argued.