> I’m not sure I could call those fair after years of attacks on people’s voting rights.
Tangent: A new attack on voting rights just succeeded in the Eighth Circuit. An individual citizen or non-governmental group can no longer sue a state government for racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
> Until a few years ago, everyone agreed that private citizens and groups could bring Section 2 lawsuits.
...
> The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of voters in Section 2 cases numerous times, including just two years ago in Allen v. Milligan.
...
> However, some opponents of the Voting Rights Act have promoted a fringe notion that because Section 2 doesn’t say the words “private right of action” — the legal term for the ability of impacted individuals or groups to sue — such lawsuits cannot be filed. This is part of a pattern of attacking the procedures underlying Voting Rights Act litigation to make it virtually impossible to enforce the law’s important protections in court.
...
> The Department of Justice can still bring Section 2 cases, but that alone is not enough to prevent voting discrimination. Individuals and groups have brought nearly 93 percent of Section 2 cases over the last 40 years. Justice Department attorneys have explained that the department relies on citizen-led lawsuits because it doesn’t have the resources to handle all these cases on its own even if it wanted to.
> That desire is not present in the current administration’s Justice Department, which shed 70 percent of the Civil Rights Division staff and has already been ordered to dismiss almost all of its Section 2 cases.
Tangent: A new attack on voting rights just succeeded in the Eighth Circuit. An individual citizen or non-governmental group can no longer sue a state government for racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
> Until a few years ago, everyone agreed that private citizens and groups could bring Section 2 lawsuits.
...
> The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of voters in Section 2 cases numerous times, including just two years ago in Allen v. Milligan.
...
> However, some opponents of the Voting Rights Act have promoted a fringe notion that because Section 2 doesn’t say the words “private right of action” — the legal term for the ability of impacted individuals or groups to sue — such lawsuits cannot be filed. This is part of a pattern of attacking the procedures underlying Voting Rights Act litigation to make it virtually impossible to enforce the law’s important protections in court.
...
> The Department of Justice can still bring Section 2 cases, but that alone is not enough to prevent voting discrimination. Individuals and groups have brought nearly 93 percent of Section 2 cases over the last 40 years. Justice Department attorneys have explained that the department relies on citizen-led lawsuits because it doesn’t have the resources to handle all these cases on its own even if it wanted to.
> That desire is not present in the current administration’s Justice Department, which shed 70 percent of the Civil Rights Division staff and has already been ordered to dismiss almost all of its Section 2 cases.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/appe...