STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN GREGORY W. MEEKS ON THE SUPREME COURT DECISION OVERTURNING SECTION 4 OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

June 25, 2013

STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN GREGORY W. MEEKS ON THE SUPREME COURT DECISION OVERTURNING SECTION 4 OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (NY) issued the following statement today regarding the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act:

“By a 5-4 majority, with all five conservative justices voting yes, the Supreme Court today struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, arguably the most far-reaching and consequential voting rights and civil rights legislation in our nation's history. When Congress originally passed the Voting Rights Act and reauthorized it four times — the latest being 2006 — it used Section 4 to establish which states and other jurisdictions had histories of subverting the voting rights of racial minorities that were so pernicious and protracted that under Section 5 the election administration and redistricting decisions of these states and jurisdictions must be pre-cleared by the U.S. Justice Department or a federal district court before they could be implemented. Let’s be clear: Without Section 4, Section 5 is deprived of its power.

“In the main, Sections 4 and 5 are the reason remarkable progress has been achieved in regard to minority voter registration and electoral participation in many of the covered states and jurisdictions. Yet, the experience of the 2010 redistricting and the 2012 election confirmed that there are forces in these and other states and jurisdictions today that are determined to deprive African American, Latino, and other minority voters of the right to freely and fairly exercise the franchise.

“In declaring Section 4 unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has dealt a devastating setback to the voting rights of African Americans and other racial minorities. The Court’s conservative majority has given a go-ahead to racially discriminatory voter ID laws and redistricting plans in dozens of states, impacting millions of voters and scores of congressional and state legislative seats. Future redistricting and election rule changes, together with the election prospects of African American, Latino, and Asian American candidates in New York City and New York State, could be affected as well since Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx are jurisdictions covered by Section 4.

“Moreover, today’s decision marks an historic retreat from the Supreme Court’s once proud and indispensable record spanning more than a half-century of guaranteeing the equal protection and exercise of the most precious right American democracy affords American citizens -- the right to cast their ballot without interference, manipulation, intimidation, or subversion.

“Yet, setbacks and steps back — no matter how severe — need not and must not be the last word. Advocates of voting rights must accept today's decision in Shelby vs. Holder as a challenge to carry on, to mobilize public opinion, to build a triumphant bipartisan coalition that is broad enough and diverse enough to turn the narrow opening that today's created into a widening thoroughfare for legislative affirmation of the essence of Section 4 in a new federal statute that takes current conditions into account.

“This decision defies the expansive bipartisanship of the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. In her written and oral dissent in which she stressed the role of Congress, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized the role of the congressional legislative process, noting that Congress conducted 21 hearings, heard the testimony of hundreds of experts and practitioners, compiled 15,000 pages of documentation of the changes and continuing abuses, on the way to reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act with adjustments that took its detailed deliberations into account by a vote 390-33 in the House and 98-0 vote in Senate by a vote of 98-0. President George W. Bush enthusiastically signed that bill into law.

“The Court acknowledged that Congress has the power to act in the wake of its decision today. And act my colleagues and I must.

“Where the Court's conservative majority sought to weaken the VRA, voting rights and city rights organizations, movements, activists, concerned citizens, and Americans of good within and beyond Congress, must show strength. And we must despair that nothing can be accomplished by this Congress. We must remember that the bipartisanship and near-unanimity that produced the 2006 authorization was achieved by a Congress in which Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. Let us come together, craft a creative legislative strategy, and get to work on renewing the Voting Rights Act.”[END]