47 articles
In a stinging defeat for the Obama administration and a number of civil rights groups in a major test case on voters’ rights, a divided Supreme Court told the state of Texas early Saturday morning that it may enforce its strict voter ID law for this year’s general election, with early voting starting next Monday.
Saying that the spread across the country of new laws to restrict voting rights will create new tests of constitutionality for the Supreme Court, the Obama administration on Wednesday evening asked the Justices in the meantime to bar Texas from using its strict new voter ID law.
UPDATE Friday a.m. A reply brief was filed late Thursday by challengers to the Texas law. It can be read here.
UPDATED Wednesday 9:35 a.m. An application for a delay of the Texas voter ID law has now been filed at the Supreme Court. It argued that more confusion will result from implementing that law than delaying its further enforcement. The application can be read here. —————- UPDATED 6:24 p.m.
The Supreme Court, with two Justices noting dissents, on Wednesday afternoon allowed North Carolina to bar voters from registering and casting their ballots on the same day, and to refuse to count votes that were cast in the wrong polling places.
UPDATE 4:21 p.m. Justice Elena Kagan has called for a response from Wisconsin to this application. It is due by 5 p.m. next Tuesday. FURTHER UPDATE 4:51 p.m.
An audio slideshow examining a Texas town’s response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder.
John Neiman is the Alabama Solicitor General. Like many of you, I spent most of my Tuesday working on cases that were not at the Supreme Court. But from time to time, I found a spare moment to glance through my office window, to look out over the Montgomery church where Dr. King once was pastor, and to think about Shelby County v. Holder.
The Court today struck down a statute that did not exist. And it did so at the request of jurisdictions seeking a little extra “dignity” — who might end up with less dignity as a result.
I have called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) a “sacred symbol” of American democracy. For that reason, the Supreme Court’s momentous decision holding unconstitutional a part of the Act – Section 4, for short — that had continued to apply, nearly fifty years later, uniquely to the South, is itself laden with deep symbolic meaning.
There are many young people in the public gallery today, and the bar section is fuller than it has been in recent sessions. At about 9:45 a.m., a mini-meeting of the Solicitors General Society takes place in the center aisle as the current SG, Donald Verrilli, greets Ted Olson.
The déjà vu is palpable.