The Supreme Court opinion in Citizens United, which gives corporations unfettered ability to pump millions into electioneering, is emblematic of a narrow high court majority that is actively advancing corporate interests, Sen. Sherrod Brown told a gathering of law students at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

In his speech, hosted by the law school's ACS law student chapter and the ACS Columbus Lawyer Chapter, Sen. Brown focused on progressive periods in the nation and how they produced lasting advancements for civil rights and economic justice. For instance, he lauded three years in the 1960s as "probably the best three years Congress has every had - 1964, 5 and 6, when Congress and a new president, President Johnson, passed Medicaid, Medicare, the Wilderness Act, and the Economic Opportunity Act, including Head Start; passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts." But Brown said that progressive era resulted in pushback from voters who apparently thought Congress moved too quickly, yet enjoyed the benefits of those laws for many years to come.

He said the current progressive era is receiving enormous pushback from corporate interests. The financial reform package that was recently passed did so over intense corporate interest lobbying - a million per day - Brown maintained. And in Citizens United v. FEC, a slim, but radical, majority of the Supreme Court issued a ruling that will further embolden corporate interests, the senator said.

Brown noted, "For years, all we've heard over and over again from conservatives is that the courts have taken an activist role; that thirty-year drumbeat ... from conservatives is that we shouldn't make laws from the bench, that liberal courts are making law from the bench, this activism from the judiciary is bad for the country." He said that refrain from conservatives has been heard often, "ad nauseam."

"But," Brown continued, "there was really no better example of an activist judiciary legislating from the bench than the Citizens United case. It was a narrow Supreme Court ruling from a radical majority; a majority that always, always, always puts corporate interests in front of everything else."

The Citizens United decision, "will clearly allow corporations to have an even larger influence in our political system," the senator said. Video of Brown's comments is available here or by clicking the picture (right). Video of the entire event, including a question-and-answer session with Brown, is here.

 

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A conversation between Dennis Parker, ACLU Racial Justice Program Director, and Marjorie Esman, ACLU of Louisiana Executive Director, about Hurricane Katrina and the racial injustices that it exposed to the rest of the country.

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Dennis Parker: Let me begin the conversation by asking you, Marjorie, as a New Orleans resident and rights and liberties advocate, what you think was the most important lesson learned from the disaster?

Marjorie Esman: Katrina showed the world what we here always knew: New Orleans is a city divided by race and class. Those divisions played a major role in everything that followed in aftermath of the flood. Still, we and the rest of the country were shocked by the images of thousands of poor black people trapped in terrible conditions and the never-ending stories of abuse. The ACLU did a report bringing to light the police abuse, racial profiling, housing discrimination and the dangerous lack of planning at the Orleans Parish Prison that disproportionately impacted the black population.

DP: Sadly, we didn't learn the lesson that systematic discrimination and inequality exist not only in New Orleans but in the United States as a whole. Katrina wasn't the first time that inequality was revealed, and sadly, it won't be the last. Remember how surprised everyone was 20 years ago when statistical evidence confirmed what communities of color had long known, that black and brown people are subjected unfairly to racial profiling? But I'm not sure we learned any lasting lessons. Look at the extreme "show me your papers" law in Arizona that basically requires police to racially profile Latinos. Where are we five years later in New Orleans?

ME: The anniversary of Katrina offers us an opportunity to reevaluate the discriminatory systems in place and to assess whether those systems have improved. The report card is mixed. Our police force is now being monitored by the U.S. Justice Department because of longstanding police misconduct, some of which was uncovered after Katrina. It's too soon to know whether this and other recent changes will have lasting effects. On the other hand, because of the connection between race and poverty, race has played a major factor in determining who can return to the affected areas.

DP: To illustrate your point, just a few days ago a federal court in Washington, D.C., blocked the state of Louisiana from continuing to use a discriminatory formula as part of the federally-funded Road Home program meant to help homeowners rebuild after the devastating damage resulting from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

The program gave relief funds based on home appraisals. The problem is that homes in poor neighborhoods, many of which are predominately black, aren't valued as highly as similar homes in white neighborhoods. People who lived in the poorer neighborhoods didn't receive equal relief even though materials and labor for reconstruction don't cost any less in one neighborhood than they do in another. The program was designed by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but both Louisiana and the federal government failed to take the reality of racial and economic inequality into account.

ME: Tragically, the ruling only impacts the families who qualify for future Road Home funding. Thousands of others who lost their homes to Katrina or Rita will not be receiving any additional money to rebuild even though the court recognized that they did not receive equitable funding because of where they lived. This means that poorer areas, many of which are black neighborhoods, will remain full of destroyed and empty houses.

DP: It's an unfortunate example of what happens when we refuse to acknowledge or forget our sad legacy of racial and economic inequality despite all of the evidence that it still persists. I believe that New Orleans and the United States will be able to more successfully address the persistent effects of racial discrimination if we stop pretending that it doesn't exist.

ME: Yes, it's time that as a country we honestly look at race and what it means. New Orleans remains a city divided by race, despite our shared experience in surviving this disaster. Five years later, despite significant improvements, we still fight the legacy of racial discrimination. Katrina made the world see the problem, and we need to remember that the problem hasn't gone away.

[Photo courtesy of Infrogmation]

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By Nsombi Lambright, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.

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I can't believe that five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated Gulf Coast communities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And although groups and advocates who were experienced in disaster recovery told us that it would take at least ten years to rebuild, I never imagined that five years later, we'd still face the same challenges. The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina; are we celebrating growth and recovery, commemorating a tragedy, or both?

As I viewed the film "Trouble the Water" this week, I was mixed up inside. The ACLU of Mississippi partnered with an organization started by Katrina Survivors who relocated from New Orleans to Jackson, called Rise Above Katrina, to show the film at Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Mississippi. I met the New Orleans natives from Rise Above Katrina and hundreds of others from the Mississippi Gulf Coast immediately after Hurricane Katrina as the ACLU began to monitor the Government's overall response to the disaster as well as the disparities between services provided to white communities and people of color communities. In 2006, the ACLU participated in a U.S. delegation to Geneva to discuss the impact of these disparities to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The ACLU also provided technical and legal assistance to Rise Above Katrina when they were threatened by law enforcement when protesting in front of the American Red Cross offices in Jackson. The group protested the American Red Cross' distribution of disaster relief funds.

As I interacted with Wilma Taylor and LaShawn Traylor and some of the other survivors, I thought about how far they'd come. Wilma is a Gulf Coast Fellow who is starting her own organization to advocate for individuals with disabilities. LaShawn is finishing her education and continuing her ministry. They've moved into new homes, celebrated births.

Life has moved on. They have risen above Katrina. However, there's still a glimpse of sadness remaining in their eyes. It's a sadness that allows you to travel into their bodies and view the pain in their souls. You hear it when they talk about loved ones who didn't make it through the storm. You hear it when they talk about their disappointment in the governments that let them down. The city of New Orleans, which did not provide transportation for people to leave; the state of Louisiana, which brought military and law enforcement in to shoot and arrest survivors; the state of Mississippi, which withheld federal dollars from everyone except homeowners; the city of Jackson, which moved everyone out of the temporary shelter of the coliseum because a Disney show was coming to town; Harrison County, the place that has not rebuilt shelters for the homeless and arrests people for not having a place to rest their heads at night.

The list of disappointments is endless. And still they rise. They rose above the storm to accomplish great things. They rose above the storm with new friends and family who were survivors too. They rose above the storm with a new sense of awareness about the importance of fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves. And even though they are still rising, they don't forget; they won't forget; they can't forget. I'll be there with them, rising too; until there is true freedom and justice for all!

 [Photo courtesy of Infrogmation]

For the second time a federal appeals court panel rejected jury awards in favor of African-American plaintiffs who alleged discrimination against the poultry company Tyson. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that a Tyson manager's use of the word "boy" to address a black man, John Hithon, did not amount to evidence of racial discrimination.

Hithon denied a promotion at the Gadsden, Ala., poultry plant, argued that manager Tom Hatley had discriminated against him, citing, among other things, Hatley's derogatory usage of "boy." In 2002, Hithon and other employees of the plant lodged a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and a jury found in their favor awarding hundreds of thousands in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages. A federal magistrate judge invalidated the jury's verdict maintaining that racial discrimination was not proved, and in 2005 a panel of the Eleventh Circuit upheld that ruling. But the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal of the case and found that the use of the word boy could prove racial bias. "The speaker's meaning may depend on various factors including context, inflection, tone of voice, local custom and historical usage," the high court ruled in remanding the case to the Eleventh Circuit. The remand also produced another jury trial, which again found in favor of Hithon and the other black employee, Anthony Ash.

But the Eleventh Circuit, in its recent ruling (pdf) in Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc., refused to budge from its earlier decision, concluding that there was not new evidence to show the use of the word was discriminatory, Law.Com reported. But U.S. District Senior Judge David D. Dowd Jr., appointed to the bench by President Reagan, in a dissent said the jury verdicts should have been upheld.

In a column for Daily Report, Stephen B. Bright, president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights, wrote that the latest decision is a troubling reminder of the need for diversity on the Eleventh Circuit.

Bright wrote:

These two white judges [referring to Eleventh Circuit Judges Edward E. Carnes and William H. Pryor, Jr., of the majority in Ash], residing in their judicial palaces as far away from the lives of ordinary people as one can get, purport to know more about what it means when a white overseer calls an African-American man ‘boy' than 24 Alabamians selected for two federal juries.

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This march back to Jim Crow would surely be more difficult if there were more people of color on the federal bench. About a quarter of the population of three states that make up the 11th Circuit is made up of African Americans and Hispanics. Yet there have been only two black judges on the 12-member 11th Circuit in its history, and they have served one at a time. There is only one active African-American federal judge in all of Georgia today, Judge W. Louis Sands in the Middle District. The Northern District of Georgia, which includes Atlanta and has three African Americans representing it in Congress, has no African American judges in active status at this time.

 

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Doug NeJaime is Associate Professor of Law at Loyola Law School - Los Angeles. He teaches in the areas of Ethical Lawyering and Law & Sexuality.

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The unwillingness of California's Attorney General and governor to defend Proposition 8 - and the corresponding presence of Proposition 8 proponents as the amendment's defenders - has yielded a procedural mess. But with all the discussion of Proposition 8 proponents' impact on procedure, it is easy to overlook their significant impact on substance: With the actual supporters of the proposition replacing the increasingly pro-gay state as the law's defender, the explicit connection between sex and sexual orientation discrimination has surfaced.

When the California Attorney General defended California's (statutory) marriage restriction in the state litigation (In re Marriage Cases), he refused to rely on governmental interests related to procreation and dual-gender childrearing. As I have noted elsewhere, this refusal reflected the mainstreaming of a gay equality norm as both a political and legal matter. In the awkward position of defending the law without resort to its key substantive purposes, the Attorney General merely asked the court to defer to the voters' desire (as evidenced by Proposition 22) to preserve the traditional definition of marriage.

With the shift toward more federal litigation on gay rights issues, we have seen a similar trajectory in the arguments offered by the (increasingly pro-gay) government in defense of anti-gay laws. For instance, the Justice Department has refused to stand behind rationales related to procreation and childrearing when defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal litigation in Massachusetts. Indeed, in arguing that "the government does not believe that DOMA can be justified by interests in ‘responsible procreation' or ‘child-rearing,' " Justice Department lawyers admitted that "children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents." When Judge Tauro found DOMA unconstitutional as applied to married same-sex couples in Massachusetts, he noted the government's unwillingness to stand behind DOMA's actual purposes and rejected the government's newly manufactured rationale, which had no substantive content and amounted to a wait-and-see approach to marriage equality.

In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal litigation challenging Proposition 8, the California Attorney General resolved his earlier inconsistency (and unease) by moving wholeheartedly to the side of marriage equality and leaving no government lawyers to defend the amendment. Enter the Proposition 8 proponents as the party charged in the federal litigation with defending its constitutionality. Finally, the substantive reasons behind marriage restrictions get their day in court. The proponents urged Judge Walker to uphold Proposition 8 not merely based on deference to voter preferences and tradition, but also as part of the government's role in channeling procreation and childrearing into dual-gender, married households. Children, Proposition 8 proponents argued, need a mother and a father because mothers and fathers (wives and husbands, women and men) fulfill different and complementary roles. Through this lens, men function as breadwinners while women become homemakers and caretakers; men teach their children about ambition, hard work, and independence, while women nurture their children with love and encouragement. As Protect Marriage's Ron Prentice put it (in a statement that Judge Walker quoted in his opinion):

Children need the chance to have both mother love and father love . . . [M]oms and dads, male and female, complement each other. They don't bring to marriage and to a family the same natural set of skills and talents and abilities. They bring to children the blessing of both masculinity and femininity.

In this framework, preventing same-sex couples from marrying preserves the sex-differentiated roles that Proposition 8 proponents believe men and women should play in marriage and the family.

Marriage equality advocates have pointed out the connection between marriage restrictions and gender roles in earlier litigations. But state courts considering same-sex couples' right to marry have consistently rejected or neglected the way in which marriage restrictions rely on and perpetuate sex stereotypes that subordinate women. While disappointing, this hardly seems surprising; state officials defending the restrictions increasingly refuse to explicitly rely on gender norms, and arguments about sex stereotypes are often buried in amicus briefs.

But Proposition 8 proponents' direct role in the Perry litigation forced Judge Walker to fully consider the sex-based implications of Proposition 8. Arguments based on sex stereotypes now constituted part of the principal case put forward by the proposition's defenders. And where Proposition 8 supporters saw legitimate justifications for the amendment, Judge Walker saw impermissible sex stereotypes, concluding that "Proposition 8 amends the California Constitution to codify distinct and unique roles for men and women in marriage."

For all the confusion introduced by Proposition 8 proponents' role in the litigation, their presence has made one thing crystal clear: Laws that prohibit marriage for same-sex couples constitute just one part of a broader normative framework of the family that harms individuals based on both sex and sexual orientation.

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By Rick Hasen, William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola Law School - Los Angeles and Publisher, Election Law Blog.

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Does this week's Ninth Circuit order putting on hold any gay marriages in California pending the resolution of appeals in the case mean that the appellate court is likely to reverse Judge Walker's decision declaring California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional? Or, to the contrary, does the fact that the Ninth Circuit also ordered the Proposition 8 proponents to brief the question whether the initiative proponents have standing to appeal in the case mean that the Court is likely to dismiss the appeal without reaching the merits? I believe caution is in order, and that proponents and opponents of gay marriage should read very little into the Ninth Circuit's order as to how that court is likely to decide the Proposition 8 case. But the Ninth Circuit's decision to issue a stay could increase the chances that the Supreme Court ultimately will side with gay marriage supporters.

Let's begin with the tenuous relationship between the stay order and an ultimate resolution of this case in the Ninth Circuit. As ACSBlog readers no doubt know, on August 4, federal district judge Vaughn Walker declared unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process clauses California's Proposition 8, an initiated constitutional amendment which bars same sex-marriage. On August 12, Judge Walker denied the request by Proposition 8's proponents to stay his ruling pending appeal, though he issued a temporary stay to allow the proponents time to seek a stay from the Ninth Circuit. Judge Walker's stay denial raised the question whether initiative proponents have adequate standing to bring an appeal in the case (given that California government officials have aligned themselves with plaintiffs' position that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional and were not going to appeal).

Proposition 8 proponents then sought a stay from the Ninth Circuit; otherwise, under Judge Walker's order, gay marriage would have been legal as of 5 p.m. today. On paper, appellate courts are supposed to give considerable deference to a trial court judge's decision to grant temporary relief such as a preliminary injunction or a stay. In practice, in hot button cases the Ninth Circuit has shown little deference to district court stay decisions and the Supreme Court has shown even less deference to the Ninth Circuit.

Under the Ninth Circuit's general orders, emergency stay motions are decided by a "motions panel" of up to three judges, assigned monthly on a rotating basis. The judges who decided the Proposition 8 stay order are not the same judges who will decide the ultimate appeal. Instead, three other judges - possibly the judges who decided an earlier appeal in the case involving the use of a video feed of the trial - will be deciding the merits of the appeal.

So one reason why the Ninth Circuit's decision on the stay is not a likely reflection of what the Ninth Circuit will do on the merits of the appeal is that the decisionmakers are not the same (unless, of course, the same judges on the motions panel are chosen by chance). Even so, some have suggested that the decision to grant a stay must have reflected a belief on the part of the motions panel that the appeal had merit, because judges are supposed to take likelihood of success on appeal into account in deciding whether or not to grant a stay. Though it is possible that likelihood of success on appeal played a part in the motions panel's decision, my guess (and it is only a guess, because the motions panel offered no explanation for its stay order) is that a stronger factor was a desire to preserve the status quo pending appeal. Without a stay, there could have been a number of gay marriages performed while the case was on appeal, and in the event that Judge Walker's decision was reversed on the merits, then there would be further litigation over the status of those marriages and potentially a lot of disappointed people and difficult financial and family law issues to untangle. Preserving the status quo has always been a very strong factor in considering whether or not a stay should be granted.

Nor would I make much of the fact that the Ninth Circuit motions panel directed the proponents to address the standing question. Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, and it is only prudent to have a jurisdictional issue like standing fully briefed once it was raised by Judge Walker. Indeed, in a little-noticed second order yesterday, the same motions panel also consolidated an appeal of the Proposition 8 ruling by Imperial County (a supporter of Proposition 8), raising the possibility that Imperial County could be found to have standing in the case. If the mention of standing in the first order meant the judges were dubious about standing, the second order meant the judges were thinking of a way out of the standing problem.

There's one more reason why at least some of the judges on the Ninth Circuit motions panel could have supported a stay besides concern about the status quo: It makes it more likely that the Supreme Court would ultimately find Proposition 8 unconstitutional. Had the Ninth Circuit upheld Judge Walker's denial of a stay, the issue would have fallen into the lap of Justice Kennedy (the Supreme Court Justice who handles emergency appeals from the Ninth Circuit) on an expedited schedule. Observers believe he's likely the swing vote on Proposition 8's constitutionality, and an emergency stay request could have brought the issue to him without giving him time for adequate reflection and rumination on the constitutional issues.

Now the case is on the back burner. The Ninth Circuit can be very slow in issuing opinions. There's no deadline after the scheduled December argument for the court to issue an opinion. Once an opinion issues, the losing party can ask for a larger "en banc" panel of Ninth Circuit judges to hear the case. It is even possible that the case could be heard by the entire Ninth Circuit. It is entirely possible for a few years to elapse before the case could get to the Supreme Court. By then, public opinion could shift more firmly toward gay marriage, and it is possible that such an emerging social consensus could influence Justice Kennedy toward striking down Proposition 8.

This case already has had more than its share of twists and turns. But for those who want to predict what will happen in the appellate courts, there's really very little to go on so far. Certainly we should not rely on a procedural order containing no written rationale offered by a different set of decisionmakers than the judges who will decide the merits of the appeal.

The Social Security Act turned 75 on Saturday, and President Obama seized the occasion to remind the public that the United States cannot afford to privatize social security.

"I'll fight with everything I've got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street," President Obama said during his weekly address. "Because you shouldn't be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you've worked so hard for - all you've earned - at risk. You should have the peace of mind of knowing that after meeting your responsibilities and paying into the system all your lives, you'll get the benefits you deserve."

Adds the Los Angeles Times in an editorial:

Conservatives have tried for several years to use the trust fund's long-term troubles as a rationale for privatizing Social Security. But allowing workers to take control (and responsibility) for all or part of their accounts would only exacerbate the problem. That's because, despite $2.5 trillion in reserves, the trust fund isn't large enough to finance the benefits promised to workers already in the system. Shifting payroll taxes from the trust fund to private accounts would make the shortfall worse.

The editorial calls instead for a combination of smaller steps, including raising the retirement age, raising payroll taxes, cutting benefits and changing cost-benefit adjustments.

Editorials in both The Washington Post and The New York Times also call for balanced reform, with a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases, but the Post calls the newest numbers a "warning sign," while The Times editorial board says "Social Security is holding up even in the face of a weak economy," due in part to savings Medicare will experience thanks to health care reform.

Paul Krugman writes that claims of a Social Security crisis rely on "bad-faith accounting."

"I'm not just talking about the fact that it's a lot easier to imagine working until you're 70 if you have a comfortable office job than if you're engaged in manual labor," Krugman writes. "America is becoming an increasingly unequal society - and the growing disparities extend to matters of life and death. Life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot at the top of the income distribution, but much less for lower-income workers. And remember, the retirement age is already scheduled to rise under current law."

Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic that Krugman's article is misleading, pointing out that modest cuts today will benefit the bottom 50 percent of Social Security recipients more than steep cuts in the future.

The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel suggests: "on this 75th anniversary, rather than fighting these Social Security-busters, we should celebrate what has been one of the nation's best anti-poverty programs - a lifeline for millions of Americans - and a reminder of what effective government can do."

She adds:

This anniversary is also a reminder of how major social reforms in this country have come about - in fits and starts. As former Clinton adviser Paul Begala observed in a Washington Post op-ed, "No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act... If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start."

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By Gilda R. Daniels, an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Daniels, a former deputy chief in the Voting Section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, will moderate a panel discussion during ACS's Voting Rights Symposium Sept. 28 (details to be announced). 

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I admit it. I am a Voting Rights Act baby. I was born 45 years ago and so was the Voting Rights Act. Just like me, the Voting Rights Act must adapt to and acknowledge a changing society, but we are far from over the hill and should not be discarded as a relic of the past. At the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Johnson called the passage of the VRA a "triumph for freedom" and linked the need for the VRA to the history of African Americans in America. After Bloody Sunday left the country in shock over man's inhumanity to man and countless efforts to secure equal voting rights through piecemeal litigation, then-Attorney General Katzenbach convinced Congress to pass and the President to sign the Voting Rights Act to serve as the vehicle that would tear down Jim Crow's barriers to the ballot, such as literacy tests and grandfather clauses. The Act was sorely needed. In March of 1965 in Alabama, only 19.3 percent of blacks were registered compared with 69.2 percent of whites, an almost 50 percent gap in registration rates. The most egregious state was Mississippi with a 63.2 percent gap between blacks and whites. Only 6.7 percent of its eligible Black voting age population was registered. (See "Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality.") Have we made advances? Absolutely. Have we reached the post-racial Promised Land where the VRA is no longer needed? No.

 

Recently, the VRA has come under attack. VRA opponents in Georgia and Alabama have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Act and particularly its Section 5 provisions which require certain jurisdictions, mainly southern states, to receive approval before making any changes to the voting scheme. Changes can include anything from moving a polling place across the street to a Congressional redistricting. Many jurisdictions consider Section 5 onerous and out of date in this "post racial" world. They eagerly point to the White House as an example of how we, as a nation, have overcome. They neglect to point out, however, that in that historic election, candidate Obama did not win any of the states in the Deep South, where blatant injustices forced the federal government to respond with the VRA and where racially polarized voting continues to exist.

 

Although electing an African American as President of the United States is no small feat given our country's racial history, many barriers remain and must be eliminated before this country can reach full electoral equality. It is the electoral process that needs to be free of new millennium methods of disenfranchisement, including such acts of voter deception and intimidation as mistakenly and maliciously advertising that "Republicans (whites) vote on Tuesday and Democrats (blacks) vote on Wednesday." These acts go unpunished and unprosecuted, yet they impact minority voters. Additionally, the vast disparities in felon disenfranchisement laws across the country strip the ability to vote from those who are no longer incarcerated and are attempting to become honorable citizens. Yet, they are denied the opportunity to vote because of past indiscretions. In some states, more than 30% of African American males are disenfranchised because of felon disenfranchisement laws.

 

Is this a different country than it was on the birth of the VRA in 1965? God, I sure hope so. Gains have certainly been made and are in no small part attributable to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. True, the registration gaps between blacks and whites are close to or have been eliminated in most Southern states. In 2005, this country had about 9,500 black elected officials - an incredible gain from the approximate 1,500 in 1970. While there has certainly been an increase in the number of minorities in the Congress, the Senate continues to have one or no African American Senators and currently, only one African American serves as governor. I submit we should not gauge the success of the VRA solely within the black/white binary. The language minority provisions have opened a whole new world of equal electoral opportunity to citizens who speak languages other than English. The VRA has provided equal access to all citizens. It ensures that no person can be denied an equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process, but the battle is not over.

After 45 years, the Voting Rights Act, just like me, is reaching its stride and realizing that it has to make some changes to adjust to this new world that we live in full of electronic voting machines, voter ID requirements and the like. It's also recognizing the need to adapt to changing electoral methods and provide equal access to a new generation of voters. It's not time for the gold watch and the rocking chair, but time to continue to ensure equal opportunity for all.

 

On the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Barack Obama called the Act "an affirmation that although the arc of the moral universe may be long, it bends toward justice."

The chance for blacks to vote for Obama was itself was a major victory for blacks and the Voting Rights Act, writes Cord Jefferson for The Root, but "sadly, the good news ended there."

Criminal disenfranchisement remains a major barrier to voting, Jefferson writes, citing Human Rights Watch statistics that nearly a third of all black men in Alabama and Florida are permanently disenfranchised by past convictions.

"The issue of felon disenfranchisement turns the spotlight on some uncomfortable facts about who goes to prison in the United States, a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world," ACS board member Linda Greenhouse wrote in a column for The New York Times last month.

In her column, Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, highlighted an opportunity for the Obama administration to take leadership on the issue of felon disenfranchisement. The Supreme Court has asked the Office of the Solicitor General to take a position on whether laws that disenfranchise those in prison or on parole are a violation of the Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

States have imposed other requirements that "restrain the right to vote," including a photo ID requirement in Indiana, and a system that relies on outdated information to verify citizenship in Georgia, writes CNN contributor Donna Brazile. Adds Brazile:

Other states have enacted similar laws or have simply refused to comply with federal demands, perhaps betting that they are unlikely to face reprimand from an overburdened federal government. This year, an election administrator in Texas -- a state employee -- publicly mocked the Voting Rights Act's language minority protections, telling an audience that poll workers should simply speak in slow, broken English to Spanish-speaking voters. The administrator was fired.

In addition to state laws that have eroded the Act, the constitutionality of the core provision of the Act, Section 5, has been challenged in multiple lawsuits in recent months, writes Kristen Clarke in The Grio.

But, Clarke adds, "It is perhaps because of the success of the Voting Rights Act that the law has a target on its back."

"A few years ago, people could not vote simply because of the color of their skin," Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), who led the civil rights march now known as "Bloody Sunday," said during remarks in Florida recently. "With the passage and implementation of this Act we have witnessed a nonviolent revolution in America," he added in a statement commemorating the Act's anniversary.

On September 28, Congressman Lewis and historian Taylor Branch will discuss the Voting Rights Act during an ACS symposium in Washington, D.C. The symposium will include two panels of leading voting rights experts, who will discuss the Act in light of recent precedent and explore election administration issues in the 2010 mid-term. More details about the event will be announced at ACS's website.

A federal judge today declared California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, holding that it is not only a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, but also impermissibly burdens "the exercise of the fundamental right to marry."

"Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right," U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker wrote in the 136-page decision. "To characterize plaintiffs' objective as ‘the right to same-sex marriage' would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy - namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages."

The decision continues:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that the opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

The decision is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then up to the Supreme Court, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The full opinion is available here.