Before we join our fellow progressives in the justifiable assault on the Supreme Court for its colossally f-ed up decision, Tuesday, in Shelby County v Holder, which struck down key elements of the pre-clearance provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, let's talk about for whom this mess tolls. It tolls for Congress.
"This is another fine mess you've gotten me into."
- Oliver Hardy, on countless occasions, to his bumbling best buddy, Stan Laurel
In those old, black and white shorts from the 1930s, the rotund blowhard, Hardy, was always blaming his rail thin, whimpering sidekick, Laurel, for the trouble the pair always got into. The problem for Hardy is that everyone always knew that it was really he who led them into trouble, and not the friend on whom he laid the problem. So it is with the Supreme Court and Congress.
In this little tragic tale of government mismanagement, SCOTUS and Congress are Laurel and Hardy, respectively. While the easy thing to do would lay all the blame on the Supremes for the VRA decision, let's keep in mind that when a majority Republican Congress reauthorized the act, and a Republican president signed it into law, in 2006, they decided they did not want to do the hard work to reformulate how jurisdictions are included in Section 5 of the Act.
"There is no valid reason to insulate the coverage formula from review merely because it was previously enacted 40 years ago," wrote the Justices, in the majority opinion. "If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula."
But the Democrats aren't blameless, here. They were in the majority, in both Houses, in 2009, when the Court last heard a case on the Voting Rights Act. That Court, in Northwest Austin v. Holder, held off on ruling on the constitutionality of Section 5, and the supporting Section 4, and chose to rule against the plaintiff "on statutory grounds."
"But," they said, Tuesday, "in issuing that decision, we expressed our broader concerns about the constitutionality of the Act. Congress could have updated the coverage formula at that time, but did not do so. Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare §4(b) [which describes the coverage formula] unconstitutional."
House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he is "hopeful Congress will put politics aside, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected."
But this Congress has yet to use something as altruistic as basic fairness as a driving force behind its legislative agenda. After all, what PAC do you call to get money for voting to be fair? Lobbyists generally fill our representatives' coffers to keep that scale tilted decidedly in their favor.
The difficulty here is clearly with Congress, if the discussion even makes it to the floor of the House. Or, as Politico put it in the lede to its story on the Hill's reaction to the VRA decision, "Add changing the Voting Rights Act to the list of things Congress probably won’t do in the next year-and-a-half."
Anything is possible, but not without a little help from people standing up, like Martin Luther King, Jr. did, and like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and others still do.
And if Congress doesn't fix its own mess, dust off your shoes. It's 1964 again.
-PBG
For a fuller version of this diary, including reactions from average citizens visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, in Atlanta, Georgia, please check out my post on the proseandthorn.net blog.