The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder left a gaping hole in our Constitution’s promise of democracy and opened the door to rampant voter suppression. Now COVID-19 is making things exponentially worse.
The 5–4 ruling in Shelby County transformed our multiracial democracy, eliminating our nation’s most successful weapon against racial discrimination in voting. It gutted the Voting Rights Act, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. By preventing states with a long history of discrimination from instituting discriminatory voting changes, the act—until Shelby County—helped safeguard the constitutional mandate of equal political opportunity for all citizens regardless of race.
Turning a blind eye to the Constitution’s explicit grant of power to Congress to eliminate racial discrimination in voting, Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion claimed that, because the South had changed, the act’s formula defining which states were covered by the requirement to preapprove voting changes was unconstitutional…
To read the entire article from Slate, click https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/john-roberts-supreme-court-coronavirus-election-crisis.html
