Obama’s DOJ Sues Texas over Voting Rights Law

FOLLOWING U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISION

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 22, 2013) — The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a new lawsuit against the Republic of Texas for its voter identification law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

The law, passed by the Texas legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, requires that a voter show one of seven types of photo identification which will be issued free of charge to qualifying voters.

Putative Attorney General Eric Holder calls the Texas law one of “voter suppression.” On August 5 during an address to the League of Women Voters in Philadelphia, Holder said:

I have already directed the Department’s Civil Rights Division to shift resources to the enforcement of a number of federal voting laws not affected by the Supreme Court’s decision — including the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act [VRA], prohibiting voting discrimination based on race, color, or language.

And today I am announcing that the Justice Department will ask a federal court in Texas to subject the State of Texas to a preclearance regime similar to the one required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act…based on the evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented last year in the redistricting case, Texas v. Holder – as well as the history of pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities that the Supreme Court itself has recognized – we believe that the State of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices.

The lawsuit by the DOJ was heralded in the mainstream press on Wednesday after Dallas County commissioners voted 3-2 to join it, along with the U.S. Representative from the district, Rep. Mark Veasey (D-Ft. Worth).  According to The Texas Tribune, other plaintiffs in the case are reported as “a physically disabled African-American veteran who lacks the required photo ID, a Tarrant County resident whose name on her driver’s license does not match the full name on her voter registration certificate and a Galveston County constable who claims the voter ID law will discourage his supporters from voting.”

The DOJ has also filed an intervenor’s motion in the case of Perez v. Perry, which concerns Texas’s redistricting plan.

In one of its last announced decisions of the 2012-2013 year, the Supreme Court rendered Section 2 of the 1964 Voting Rights Act as no longer applicable to current voting conditions in the U.S. and specifically, in states, including Texas, which were required to obtain federal oversight before changing their voting laws based on a history of racially-charged voter intimidation or prohibition.

The Republic of Texas had sued the DOJ after it applied for pre-clearance, as was required by the Voting Rights Act, to enact the 2011 law and was rejected.

The DOJ’s new lawsuit is reported widely in the press today.

Holder chose not to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party after they were shown on video intimidating prospective voters outside of a Philadelphia polling location on November 4, 2012 with billy clubs, even though the defendants defaulted and the DOJ therefore could have obtained a default judgment.

Critics of the law say that obtaining identification papers to substantiate their right to vote “is sometimes difficult.”  Some say that the necessary proofs sometimes “don’t exist.”

Putative president Barack Hussein Obama has not presented any identification to show that he is a United States citizen, as the long-form birth certificate image posted on the White House website, and his Selective Service registration form, have both been declared “computer-generated forgeries” by a law enforcement investigation.  This month, citizens in various congressional districts have been urging their congressmen to open an investigation into who created the forgery and why.