A crucial decision by a federal appeals court on Monday could lead to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) losing much of its strength as a law, should the decision be upheld by the Supreme Court.
Politico reports that the ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that only the federal government is allowed to sue under a key section of the civil rights law, not private citizens or civil rights groups, which had used the law to do so in the past.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down an Alabama congressional district map drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in a decision that the Court’s majority says upholds the Voting Rights Act.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the court’s three liberals in the 5-4 ruling against Alabama. State officials will now have to redraw the congressional map to correctly reflect that the state is 27% black.
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The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee has prompted extensive commentary about the implications for future challenges to election laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Litigants arguing that some laws, such as Georgia’s newly enacted SB 202, disproportionately affect racial minorities may have a greater challenge meeting the standard set forth by the court than the standard that some lower courts had been using in recent years.
But while the justices split on a 6-3 vote on whether a pair of Arizona statutes ran afoul of the Act, it voted 6-0 (with three justices not addressing the question) in concluding that Arizona did not act with discriminatory intent. This holding sets the stage for the Justice Department’s recent lawsuit against Georgia, and it offers hints at how district courts and reviewing courts should behave. In short, the Justice Department has an uphill battle.
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Arizona’s 2016 ballot harvesting ban will remain in effect for the 2020 General Election.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that they would hear Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s appeal against the Democratic National Committee over their challenge to a ban on anyone except a caregiver or immediate family member delivering an early ballot.
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