A Bad “Voting Rights” Bill and Eric Cantor | Center for Equal Opportunity

The big political news last week was, of course, the defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in his Republican primary. Not so coincidentally, the day before that I had noted on National Review Online that a number of conservative leaders had requested a meeting with Rep. Cantor regarding proposed changes to the Voting Rights Act being pushed by the Left because it is unhappy with last year’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. The letter the leaders sent explained why the bill in question is a bad idea, and the leaders wanted Rep. Cantor to come out forthrightly against it — as, indeed, he should. The bill is indeed a really bad idea, as explained here and here and here and here.

The day after the primary vote, I noted again the unhappiness among conservatives with Rep. Cantor’s failure to oppose forthrightly that very bad bill to amend the Voting Rights Act. I noted that, while of course there were other issues involved, too, the voting rights matter was illustrative and should not be discounted — and that other Republicans need to take heed. Later, John Fund wrote about the Cantor/voting-rights nexus, too.

By the way, I also discussed the voting bill more generally last week on the To the Point radio show, which you can listen to here. Also on the show was Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has just announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, will have hearings on the bill next week, on June 25.

Alas, Juan Williams wrote in The Hill this week that, in his waning days as majority leader, Rep. Cantor should champion this bill. So here’s the response I posted:

This is really bad advice from Juan Williams, and if Mr. Cantor followed it, it would confirm the wisdom of the voters last Tuesday.

First, there isn’t any legislation needed. The Shelby County decision was aimed at only one section of the Voting Rights Act — the preclearance provision, requiring some (mostly southern) jurisdictions to get permission in advance from the federal government before making any change related to voting — and the rest of the Act remains in full force, including other, potent enforcement provisions for every jurisdiction in the country.

And, indeed, for better or worse the Justice Department and civil-rights groups are now using those other provisions to try to advance their agendas, which amount to a war on voter-ID requirements and ensuring the continued racial gerrymandering and segregation of voting districts. There’s no evidence that the Left needs more weapons in its arsenal; all that’s different in the post–Shelby County world is that now its lawyers have to prove racial discrimination before they can get court relief, which is the way that every other civil-rights law works.

The second point: Much in the bill has nothing to do with Shelby County at all. Rather, the Court’s decision is being used as an excuse to enact the Left’s wish-list in voting policy. In particular, the Left wants to promote its plaintiffs’ lawyers to the status of the attorney general in making civil-rights enforcement decisions. All this is a standard demand for the civil-rights groups whenever they (deservedly) lose a case and run to Congress.

The Left’s agenda is, of course, a decidedly color-conscious one. Thus, the bill itself features racial classifications, and offers protections for “minority voters” that it withholds from “nonminority” voters.

Key provisions of the bill attempt to reinstate the “preclearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act by amending another section of the Act so that it is triggered even when there has been no constitutional violation, as is now required by that section. This raises the same sort of constitutional issue that resulted in the Shelby County decision in the first place, since Congress would again be acting to limit state prerogatives even though it lacks a constitutional predicate for doing so.

What’s more, the new legislation is an attempt to ensure that the Voting Rights Act works principally as a “disparate impact” statute. This approach to civil-rights enforcement is favored by the Obama administration, as shown by its new school-discipline “guidance” this year. But that approach is not about stopping real discrimination; it’s about ensuring racial proportionality by eliminating legitimate standards and procedures.

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Finally, there was a front-page story last week in the New York Times about Bowdoin College’s decision that the campus’s Christian Fellowship would no longer be recognized by the school because the group has taken this outrageous position: While any student can participate in its activities, only actual Christians can hold leadership positions.

Why, you might as well allow the College Republicans to require that its leaders be Republicans — who knows where this might end?! Center for Equal Opportunity board member Tom Klingenstein has played a leading role in exposing the political correctness run amok at Bowdoin — and good for him.

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