WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday that the Justice Department would ask a court to require Texas to get permission from the federal government before making voting changes in that state for the next decade.
The move opens a new chapter in the political struggle over election rules after the Supreme Court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act last month.
In a speech before the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Holder also indicated that the court motion - which was filed later Thursday in San Antonio - is most likely just an opening salvo in a new strategy by President Barack Obama’s administration to try to reimpose “pre-clearance” requirements in parts of the country that have a history of discriminating against minority-group voters.
Texas Republicans suggested the administration effort was more about politics.
“This decision has nothing to do with protecting voting rights and everything to do with advancing a partisan political agenda,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn said after Holder’s speech.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeted, “ I’ll fight Obama’s effort to control our elections & I’ll fight against cheating at the ballot box.” Abbott is running for governor.
Holder’s statements come as states across the South, from Texas to North Carolina, have been rushing to enforce or enact new restrictions on voting eligibility after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case, which removed the pre-clearance safeguard.
“This is the department’s first action to protect voting rights following the Shelby County decision, but it will not be our last,” Holder said. “Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to subject states to pre-clearance as necessary. My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found.”
State officials have celebrated the ruling as lifting an obsolete relic of the civil-rights era that they say unfairly treated their states differently from other parts of the country, while civil-rights advocates have lamented it as removing a safeguard that is still necessary. Lawyers for minority groups already have asked courts to return Texas to federal oversight.
The Justice Department’s actions will bring the weight of the federal government behind those efforts.
The Justice Department is asking that a pre-approval requirement in Texas apply for 10 years and “beyond 10 years in the event of further discriminatory acts,” the department said in its court filing.
In the Texas case, the department is not directly intervening but has filed what’s known as a statement of interest in support of private groups that have filed suit.
A three-judge panel in San Antonio has been looking at Texas voting maps for state and congressional redistricting since 2011, when the court threw out boundaries drawn by a then-GOP supermajority in the Statehouse.
An ensuing legal battle between the state and a coalition of minority-rights groups upset the 2012 elections in Texas, delaying party primaries that ultimately used temporary maps drawn by the court.
Under the direction of GOP Gov. Rick Perry last month, the Legislature ratified those interim maps as permanent over the objection of Democrats, who contend the maps are still biased and under-represent minority groups.
“The fact that intervention in Texas is the Department of Justice’s first action to protect voting rights” after the Supreme Court decision “speaks volumes about the seriousness of Texas’ actions,” said state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat from San Antonio and the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which is a plaintiff in the San Antonio case.
On Thursday, Perry called the Obama administration’s actions an “end run around the Supreme Court.”
Richard Pildes, a New York University professor who specializes in election-law issues, said the move was “a dramatically significant moment in the next phase of the Voting Rights Act’s development” after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“If this strategy works, it will become a way of partially updating the Voting Rights Act through the courts,” he said. “The Justice Department is trying to get the courts to step into the role the Justice Department played before the Shelby County decision. The Voting Rights Act has always permitted this, in some circumstances, but this strategy wasn’t used much. If this approach works, it will help update the Voting Rights Act even without congressional action.”
In the Shelby County case, a county in Alabama challenged the constitutionality of the requirement that it receive pre-clearance for any changes to its voting procedures from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division or a federal court. That requirement was imposed by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which covered areas with a history of discriminating against minority-group voters.
Under the Section 5 pre-clearance requirement, all or parts of 15 states had to get federal approval before changing election districts, amending voting rules or even moving a polling place. The Justice Department used that provision, which covered virtually the entire South, to object to more than 2,400 state and local voting changes from 1982 to 2006.
The Supreme Court effectively gutted that provision by striking down as outdated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which defined which areas were covered by the pre-clearance requirement. The decision was a 5-4 vote, with the five Republican-appointed justices in the majority and the four Democratic-appointed ones in dissent.
The Supreme Court majority faulted Congress for relying on a decades-old formula for determining which states were covered by the pre-clearance requirement. The formula ties coverage to voter registration rates, turnout and ballot-box rules in the1960s and early 1970s.
The ruling left in place, however, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars discriminatory voting practices everywhere. The difference is that states may go ahead and impose their changes, and plaintiffs have to prove that the changes are discriminatory - if they have the legal resources to file a lawsuit - instead of the state having to prove to the federal government that the changes will not dilute minority-group voting power.
The court also left in place Section 3, which says that areas found to have intentionally discriminated can be subjected to Section 5’s pre-clearance requirements.
In his speech, Holder said that evidence submitted to a court last year showed that the Texas Legislature had intentionally discriminated against Hispanics when redrawing district lines.
Holder said, “Based on the evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented last year in the redistricting case, Texas v. Holder - as well as the history of pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities that the Supreme Court itself has recognized - we believe that the state of Texas should be required to go through a pre-clearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices.”
The department also may soon file similar legal action against Texas over its voter-identification law, which also was blocked by a federal court last year. Hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shelby County case, the state said it would begin enforcing the law.
In theory, Congress - which as recently as 2006 overwhelmingly had voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act - could enact a new version of Section 4 to restore a coverage formula and put the pre-clearance procedures back into effect, and some lawmakers have proposed doing so. But such legislation faces steep political challenges.
Holder urged Congress to reimpose the pre-clearance procedures generally, saying the Justice Department’s efforts “are no substitute for legislation that will fill the void left by the Supreme Court’s decision. This issue transcends partisanship, and we must work together. We cannot allow the slow unraveling of the progress that so many, throughout history, have sacrificed so much to achieve.”
North Carolina may become another target for the administration’s initiative.
On Thursday, it became the f irst state to pass a more-restrictive voting law after the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling.
The state Senate voted 33-14 to require photo identification for voters and to limit the time frame for early voting. The state House then approved the measure 73-41.
Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican elected in November, is expected to sign the bill into law.
The measure shortens the early-voting period before Election Day, ends same-day registration and prohibits high school students from registering before their 18th birthdays.
A Republican supporter of the bill, state Sen. Bob Rucho, said Thursday that the measure was needed to “re-establish a level of confidence in the system.”
Photo identification is required to “go into Bank of America to cash a check, to take care of welfare papers or to go on an airplane,” he said.
Opponents say the bill would limit turnout by newer voters who are younger and newly registered minority-group members.
“In my opinion, it is the most radical voter suppression bill in America,” said state Rep. Duane Hall, a Democrat. “They have taken parts of bills from all over the country and combined them into one.” Information for this article was contributed by Charlie Savage of The New York Times; by Keith Collins, Pete Yost, Chris Tomlinson, Paul Weber, Mark Sherman and Michael Biesecker of The Associated Press; and by Phil Mattingly, David Mildenberg and Michael Tackett of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/26/2013