VotingRights

Smith v allwright

In 1923, the Texas Democratic Party required all voters in its primary to be white based on a state law authorizing the party to establish its own internal rules. Lonnie E. Smith, a black dentist a voter in Harris County, Texas, sued county election official S. S. Allwright for the right to vote in the primary. Question Did denying blacks the right to vote in primary elections violate the Constitution? Conclusion In an opinion written by Justice Stanley F. Reed, the Court struck down the law.The Court reasoned that the rule restricting primary voters to whites denied Smith equal protection under the law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Baker v. Carr

case that est. one man one vote. this decision created guidelines for drawing up congresional districts and guaranteed a more equitable system of representation to the citizens of each state

Terry v. Adams (1953)

eliminated privately administered elections

Davis v. Bandemer

gerrymandering would be unconstitutional if too strongly biased but isn't illegal because it's unavoidable

b. Cases to visit: Smith v. Allwright (1944), Terry v. Adams (1953)

i. The court finally settled on a position: primary elections were governmental even if they were run by parties. The Court stuck with this position, so discrimination in the ability to vote in the primaries could be challenged under 14th and 15th amendments.

Crawford v. Marion County Election Board

upheld the state of Indiana's requirement for voters to show photo-ID in order to vote

b. Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama

--The Supreme Court had a complicated decision, but by a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned Alabama's redistricting plan saying it violated Equal Protection.

6. Bush v. Gore

Background: The official count show Bush won and there were all sorts of questions on how to count votes. The Supreme Court ultimately ordered a statewide recount. Governor Bush's people challenged the recount. There was no mandate on how to count votes and the argument was that this was inappropriate procedure. The Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to the recount and then heard oral argument in the case. The day after, the Supreme Court ruled the recount violated Equal Protection. The Court divided into 3 groups. 5 of the justices said it violates Equal Protection and because of the way we read federal law, there is a date beyond which you cannot engage in a recount because a state needs to produce its decision by then. 2 of the justice said Equal Protection was violated and there is no reason to have this deadline. 2 justices said there is no violation of Equal Protection. The 5 were the 5 most conservative. The 2 were 2 liberals in the court and were trying to reach a compromise where a moderate conservative would join them. The moderate conservatives did not join them, so they were stuck. People say it was a 5-4 decision and that's how it was in nature, 5 conservatives and 4 liberals. The justices in the majority knew they needed to settle the election. The result was a strange decision. It didn't determine the result, but it did resolve the election. Justices voted along ideological lines so it gave a lot of people a bad feeling about the decision and the court itself. Bush v. Gore was a landmark case. The 5 agreed there was a violation of Equal Protection and even though the court said this was limited, it alerted everybody that counting votes was not just mechanical. It involved discretion. The per curiam opinion held 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional. Even if the recount was fair in theory, it was unfair in practice. The record suggested that different standards were applied from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county. Because of those and other procedural difficulties, the court held in a 5-4 vote that no constitutional recount could be fashioned in the time remaining.

3. The drawing of legislative districts has been the dominant racial issue in recent years. The cases that the Court has decided on racial factors in districting are often complicated, and the Court's decisions on this issue have been complicated as well. Your focus should be on understanding the Court's overall position on the issue; don't worry about individual decisions.

Cracking is drawing districts through that area so there is no majority of black voters. If districts were drawn in such a way that they minimize black voter representation, they violate the Voting Rights Act and Equal Protection. The Court has addressed a bunch of cases involving a variety of issues where districts are deliberately created to have majority black voters (majority-minority districts). The early cases are efforts to try to ensure that some black representatives get elected and this would be done for 2 reasons: that was desirable and a good itself, secondly because the position of the justice department in enforcing the Voting Rights Act has been that efforts should made to ensure black representation. This is relevant in Congress and the House, but primarily the House. Districts were drawn with the goal that certain number of districts would have majority black voters. More recently though, there have been cases involving the effort to create overwhelmingly black districts with blacks not being represented in other districts. That is called packing. Racial considerations were bowed up with partisan considerations. Motives of majority black districts are tied with partisanships. What we've had more recently is republican legislatures in the South created majority black districts. It's created a different perception. This is an effort by republican legislators to put black voter in small districts to have a maximum number of republican voters.

5. Among the issues that do not have direct racial implications, we look at two sets of issues relate to districting: the requirement of equality in the population of districts and challenges to partisan gerrymandering. You should have a general understanding of what the Court has said about those two types of issues.

Every state is responsible for drawing district lines for the legislature and house. Now, many states adopted the federal lobby where one house in the legislature were made equal by population and the other was based on counties. Some states went for decades without drawing new boundaries which meant there would be a wider deviation from population equality. The court decided Baker v. Carr in 1961. Once they decided Baker, there was a spade of cases that the Supreme Court decided in the 60s and 70s about how district lines should be drawn. The cases were complicated, but the bottom line said population has to be equal across districts. For both houses, districts have to be equal in population. The court gave more leeway for senate districts than house districts and cannot deviate much at all. When the Supreme Court demanded equality, they sometimes used the expression "one person, one vote." And though no one thought about it much at the time, it raised an interesting question for some people. The assumption had been there was equal population across districts. Should you have equal number of eligible voters? In Evenwel v. Adam in 2016, Evanwell and the other challengers argued that "one person, one vote" means under equal protection, it should be based on eligible voters. The Supreme Court rejected this and unanimously said it's okay if states continue to base redistricting under total population. The court did not address would it be okay if states moved to number of eligible voters. b. There is an infinite number of ways districts could be drawn while maintaining equality. Back in the 1810s, they were drawn to produce political advantage and usually favored a single party. Today, that kind of practice has become easier with the use of computers. In every state where one party controls it, that party ends up with a significant advantage. It's thought of as a Republican device because they have the majority. Unequal population was challenged as a violation of EP. Could you challenge partisan gerrymandering under EP? The SC did not want to get into it because once you establish the principle, you have to develop criteria. How do you decide whether there is enough of a skew in favor of one party? Davis v. Bandemer in 1986. At least as a matter of principle, somebody could bring an equal protection case as a partisan gerrymander. It was a 6-3 vote. The majority set a high bar: intentional discrimination against an identifiable political group and an actual discriminatory effect on that group had to be more than marginal.

Voter identification laws are one example of election rules that have a partisan element, in that the rules have a potential impact on the ability of the two parties to win elections. In the political arena, Republicans and Democrats take opposing positions on a variety of election rules. In the past two decades, to what extent have Supreme Court justices responded to these rules along partisan lines? To the extent that the justices have responded along partisan lines, how would you explain that response; in other words, why does party-line voting occurred?

From the perspective of advocates of the law, voter identification is necessary to prevent fraud. The opponents say that there isn't much election fraud and it's simply used to keep people from voting. Crawford v. Marion County was almost entirely along ideological lines. Voter identification laws have been adopted by Republican legislatures because the perception is the people prevented are predominantly democratic.

b. In Mobile v. Bolden (1980),

GOT RID OF INTENT TEST-- AT LARGE ELECTIONS WERE DISCRIMINATORY the issue at hand is at-large elections. The Supreme Court ruled here that intent was the key. Had the system been adopted with the intent of prohibiting black candidates, then this would be a problem. The majority decided that intent was the right to test and there was no violation. The dissenting justices argued that intent should not be required. Congress had to renew the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and people who opposed Bolden wanted Congress to get rid of the intent test. They were successful. The Voting Rights Act said if a voting system has the effect of limiting black voter representation, it is a violation of Equal Protection, not the intent.

On securing the right to vote, you should understand the barriers that southern states created to prevent black citizens from voting and how the Supreme Court responded to challenges brought against those barriers. How were those barriers ultimately broken down? As with education, one key issue to understand is the roles that the Supreme Court and Congress played in breaking down the barriers.

Grandfather Clause, the poll tax, literacy testing, and all-white primaries. The Grandfather Clause was struck down in 1915 and they ruled it as a violation of the 15th amendment. The poll tax, the Supreme Court reached a couple decisions in 1935 and 1951. One said it was constitutionally accepted and did not discriminate. In 1959, the Supreme Court addressed literacy testing and upheld it on the same ground: not discriminatory in itself. The court did say, "We recognize it could be used in a discriminatory way, but not on its face, only in practice. Therefore, it does not violate the 15th amendment. The white primary had the longest and most complicated history and the length and complexity reflected government action, not private action. The Supreme Court had to wrestle with whether a party primary had enough governmental connection so the 14th and 15th amendments would apply

7. In recent years, some new issues have arisen about rules for voting. The most prominent development is the enactment of laws requiring that voters have certain kinds of personal identification to be allowed to vote at the polls. You should understand what position the Court has taken on voter identification laws.

In Crawford v. Marion in 2008 in Indiana, the court addressed if having such a requirement violated Equal Protection. The court decided in a 6-3 vote that the Indiana Law passed Equal Protection was acceptable. The decision did not end controversy and it is possible the Supreme Court will hear another case. Crawford established the principle that such laws were not inherently a violation of Equal Protection even if the requirements were fairly tough

Shelby County v. Holder

Ruled the preclearance portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional

4. The Supreme Court upheld two key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 shortly after its adoption. But in Shelby County v. Holder, decided in 2013, the Court struck down another provision of the amended version of the Act. You should understand what the Court struck down, the reasoning of the Court's opinion, and the reasoning of Justice Ginsburg's dissent. You should also be aware of the impact of the Court's decision so far.

The Voting Rights Act said certain counties had to go through a preclearance procedure that said, "No election laws could go into effect without approval by the Justice Department." That procedure operated and the Justice Department refused to approve new election laws because they were racially discriminated. States subject to pre-clearance said the formula that put them under this (section 4 of Voting Rights Act) is outdated and they should no longer be singled out. The Supreme Court said in a 5-4 vote that the formula was in fact outdated and so preclearance could not be used under section 5 unless and until congress wrote a new one. Until the new one was adopted, there could be no preclearance. Given the politics of the situation, there wasn't going to be a new or a consensus in congress to adopt a new one. It still hasn't happened. There is no pre-clearance anymore. b. Justice John Roberts wrote the majority important and held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act imposes current burdens that are no longer responsive to the current conditions in the voting districts in question. Justice Ginsburg gave the dissenting opinion in which she argued that Congress' power to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments encompasses legislative action such as the Voting Rights Act. Legislative history, text of the amendments, and judicial precedent support Congress' authority to enact legislation that specifically targets potential state abuses.

cooper v harris

The court affirmed the lower court's decision and found a violation of Equal Protection. It was a 5-3 vote (only 8 members). The majority said you cannot take race into account in any way when drawing districts. So the liberal members primarily found violations of Equal Protetion.