The Supreme Court’s decision striking down a core of the Voting Rights Act was, among other things, a defeat for Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. They had filed briefs siding against their own city and state and in favor of the federal oversight.
No one is suggesting that the trio did anything unethical by filing briefs arguing against the jurisdictions they represent. They tried to convince the court that the burdens the Voting Rights Act places on parts of New York, where it requires pre-clearance of certain election rules, have been no big inconvenience to the city and state.
Their briefs cut no mustard with the court. In what can be seen as a historic vindication of the progress made by the civil-rights movement, a majority of the justices declared that a key part of the Voting Rights Act, which was originally a temporary measure, had been overtaken by history and is now an unconstitutional infringement on local authority.
The case arose from Shelby County, Ala., which has been, like parts of New York, subjected under the Voting Rights Act to special federal oversight. Shelby County objected to oversight under sections of the act that were renewed in 2006 by an overwhelming vote of the Congress. New York City and the state chimed in to suggest that the pre-clearances required under the act were no inconvenience.
On the contrary, the pre-clearance could actually spare the state debilitating litigation, Schneiderman’s brief suggested. But Bloomberg, Quinn and Schneiderman seemed to forget that this case was not about their convenience. It was about fundamental rights and the constitutional balance of power.
That balance certainly gives Congress standing on voting rights. The 15th Amendment, one of the so-called Reconstruction Amendments passed after the Civil War, declares that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” meaning slavery.
It gave Congress power to enforce that article by “appropriate legislation.” That power is unambiguous.But it is balanced by an earlier amendment, the 10th, which reserves to the states and the people powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.Those powers, Shelby County argued and the court affirmed yesterday, include the power to regulate elections.
It is shocking that neither Bloomberg, Quinn nor Schneiderman asserted New York’s 10th Amendment rights to run its own affairs absent proof that it was doing something bigoted. This is particularly true given the history of New York’s ratification of the Constitution, which took place 225 years ago at Poughkeepsie.
New York was one of the last of the original states to ratify. It did so with a caveat that it listed in a statement of what it called “impressions.” It wanted certain rights spelled out further. One was that every power and jurisdiction not clearly delegated to Congress would remain with the people or their state governments.
Neither Schneiderman nor New York City’s counsel, Michael Cardozo, gave it so much as a how-do-you-do in their filings in the case the court just decided. The fact prompted me some weeks ago to telephone one of the great American newspaper proprietors, H. Brandt Ayers, of the Anniston, Ala., Star. I’d gone to work for him 45 years ago, inspired by the fact that he’d risked everything — his newspaper, his fortune, his name — to side with the civil-rights movement.
He wrote a beautiful column on the Shelby County case, recalling the heroism of the marchers at Selma. He concluded we are at a different stage of things. “Maybe it’s time for the Justices to let the fruits of Selma wither away, and let local mayors and district attorneys and newspaper editors see if they can’t keep justice alive all by themselves,” he wrote.
If they fall short, the federal authorities can still take certain actions. But a North that once led the nation in this great crusade is being led now by a South that has just reset the constitutional balance in a case that New York’s leaders failed to grasp.