Arizona Sues Feds Over Voting Rights Act
With its tough anti-illegal immigration law headed to the Supreme Court, the State of Arizona is opening up another legal front in its 10th Amendment tussle with Eric Holder’s Justice Department. NBC News reports that the issue this time is the Voting Rights Act:
Arizona is challenging the law’s requirement that the state seek Justice Department approval for any changes in how elections are conducted. Many states are subject to the law’s pre-clearance requirement, generally to remedy past restrictions that discouraged minority voting.
“Arizona is still penalized for archaic violations that were corrected with the implementation of bilingual ballots prior to the 1974 elections,” said the state’s Attorney General Tom Horne. He noted that in 1974, Arizona became the second state to elect a Hispanic governor.
In his response, Attorney General Holder showed how tone deaf he is to any claim of federal overreach:
Vowing to fight the challenge, Holder said the provisions challenged in this case, including the pre-clearance requirement, “were reauthorized by Congress in 2006 with overwhelming and bipartisan support. The Justice Department will continue to enforce the Voting Rights Act, including each of the provisions challenged today,” he said.
So, a law is constitutional because Congress reauthorized it with “overwhelming and bipartisan support”? There isn’t a justice on the Supreme Court who has let that kind of vapid thinking dissuade him or her from overturning a law.
If that’s the best defense Holder can muster, Arizona may have found the perfect foil to (unwittingly) help it downsize the federal government.
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