Warning: Danger Ahead

Carroll G. Robinson is a Texas attorney and professor. He is also chairman of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats. He has asked me to share his opinion on today's Supreme Court decision gutting a major part of the Voting Rights Act. His thoughts follow:

The Republican justices on the United States Supreme Court have just ruled that Republican state legislators can discriminate against minority voters but just not too much. The Republican justices did not say what would constitute too much discrimination. We can now expect to see a lot more experimentation by Republican state legislators when it comes to voter suppression. No amount of voter suppression will be too much for many of them.

The Court's decision, in the Arizona voting rights cases and the unwillingness of some Senate Democrats in D.C. to amend the filibuster to pass election reform and legislation to strengthen the Voting Rights Act, may just be the beginning of the worst still yet to come.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was enacted into law to help enforce the Civil War
Amendments to The United States Constitution. The purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to protect the right to vote, for Blacks and other people of color, as the right to vote was an essential and fundamental part of being a citizen in our nation.

In their opinion in the Arizona voting rights cases, the Republican justices attempted to disguise their continued subversion of the Voting Rights Act in the argument that all election laws cause a burden. That may be true but that equal burden is not the burden the Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent. The Voting Rights Act was meant to protect against unequal burdens against voters of color. It was not passed to prevent only extreme burdens on the right of people of color to vote; it was passed to defend against all unequal burdens no matter how small.

What Republican justices have now done is establish a new and more modern version of with "all deliberate speed". Now, it's in the context of voting rights. Now, the issue is how much discrimination is too much? Now, the question becomes, will the Court apply this new standard in redistricting cases?

Watch what's coming now that Republicans, on the United States Supreme Court, have opened this door. There is danger ahead.