Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
The days of men wearing hoods and burning crosses seem to have mostly passed here in the Deep South. But they have been replaced by the days of men filing dubious lawsuits, funded by mysterious organizations.
That seems to be the take-home lesson from an effort in Shelby County, Alabama, to free itself from U.S. Justice Department oversight of its elections. The Shelby County Commission, in a lawsuit funded by a shadowy nonprofit group, claimed that portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were unnecessary, burdensome, and unfair.
A federal judge yesterday ruled against Shelby County, finding that Congress had ample evidence that minority rights at the ballot box need continued monitoring. Congress voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to extend the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. Shelby County's lawsuit challenged that decision, but U.S. District Judge John Bates said Congress was well within its rights.
This case hits close to home because I live in Shelby County, Alabama, and for four-plus years, I've presented detailed evidence on this blog about the blatant corruption of a "justice system" that regularly tramples constitutional rights. Mrs. Schnauzer and I have been targeted by rogue judges and lawyers in Shelby County, even though we are white. We long have suspected that dysfunction here, in Alabama's fastest growing county, is driven largely by what we called "race-based fears" or RBF.
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