The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Justice to again consider minority voters
WASHINGTON — With one contentious election behind it, the Supreme Court this week will consider the rules for the next, and how federal law protects minority voters as states across the nation race to revamp their regulations.
The court on Tuesday will review the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.
The cases at the Supreme Court involve two voting regulations from Arizona that are in common use across the country. One throws out the ballots of those who vote in the wrong precinct. The other restricts who may collect ballots cast early for delivery to polling places, a practice then-president Donald Trump denounced as “ballot harvesting.”
But the greater impact will be the test that the increasingly conservative court develops for proving violations of the VRA, as new laws are proposed and state legislatures begin redrawing congressional and legislative districts following the 2020 Census.
What’s happening
Reacting to Trump’s unproven claims of widespread fraud, Republican-led legislatures are racing to enact new laws that cut back on easements to voting implemented in part by the coronavirus pandemic. Even if investigations by Trump’s Justice Department and other Republican officials failed to substantiate the charges, they say changes are need to assure public confidence in election outcomes.
The liberal Brennan Center for Justice says that lawmakers in 33 states have crafted more than 165 bills to restrict voting so far this year — more than four times the number in last year’s legislative sessions.
Arizona leads the nation in restrictive proposals, the center said.
Effect of past rulings
In 2013, the Supreme Court made it harder for civil rights groups to challenge such changes. It effectively eliminated the requirement that states proven to have discriminated against minorities in the past receive advance approval from a panel of federal judges or the Justice Department before changing their laws.
Civil rights groups openly worry that the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder portends a further weakening of the federal law, as the court’s conservative majority has been bolstered since then.
About the cases
While the law protects minorities from government discrimination, the cases at the Supreme Court illustrate how minority voting and partisan politics have become entwined.
The Democratic National Committee brought the challenge of Arizona’s laws, and the Republican Party is on the other side. The state’s Republican governor, attorney general and legislative leaders defend the laws; Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state is content with a federal appeals court striking them down.
The court will be examining a part of the voter protection law called Section 2, which was amended in 1982 to prohibit any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
It most often has been employed against jurisdictions that rig election lines to dilute minority voters’ impact. But after the Shelby County decision, civil rights groups are using it to challenge restrictions they say place a heavier burden on minority groups.
After Democrats challenged the Arizona provisions, a district judge held a trial and upheld them. A panel of the 9th Circuit agreed on a 2-1 vote.
But a larger panel of the 9th Circuit reviewed those decisions, and said that the way the provisions were applied in Arizona disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic voters.
Those judges said that the state changed locations of voting places more often in minority communities, leading to voter confusion, and that the rates of discarded “out of precinct” (OOP) votes were far higher in Arizona than in other states.
Arizona throws out the entire ballot, even if some races — governor, for instance — are not affected by the voter’s precinct location.
Democrats said that between 2008 and 2016, Arizona discarded 38,335 OOP ballots in general elections, all of which were cast by registered, eligible voters.
The judges said a ban on collecting ballots was intentionally passed to harm minority voters, who, they said, were more likely to be homebound or disabled and also lacking reliable means to vote in person.
Native Americans had in the past been served by community or political leaders who collected early vote ballots, the court said.
Justice Dept. supports Arizona law
The Supreme Court accepted the case before the election, and the Trump administration supported Arizona in defending its laws. But civil rights groups were disappointed when the Justice Department recently declined to change its position.
While a career lawyer in the solicitor general’s office separated the Biden administration from the department’s previous view of how Section 2 should be interpreted, he said the department “does not disagree” that Arizona’s restrictions do not violate the law.
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged for the first time Sunday that some of his behavior with women had been “misinterpreted as unwanted flirtation,” and said he would cooperate with a sexual harassment investigation led by the state’s attorney general.
In a statement released amid mounting criticism from within his own party, the Democrat maintained he had never inappropriately touched or propositioned anyone. But he said he had teased people and made jokes about their personal lives in an attempt to be “playful.”
“I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended. I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that,” he said.
Cuomo, one of America’s most prominent governors, is facing the most serious challenge of his decade in office following claims he sexually harassed at least two women who worked for him. Democrats in New York and around the nation aren’t rallying to his side, leaving him increasingly isolated from traditional allies.
His partial admission of wrongdoing came after a day of wrangling over who should investigate his workplace behavior.
By day’s end, Cuomo had acquiesced to demands that Attorney General Letitia James control the inquiry.
James said Sunday evening that she expected to receive a formal referral that would giver her office subpoena power and allow her to hire and deputize an outside law firm for “a rigorous and independent investigation.”
“This is not a responsibility we take lightly,” said James, a Democrat who has been, at times, allied with Cuomo but is independently elected and had emerged as a consensus choice to lead a probe.
Calls for an investigation mounted after a second former employee of Cuomo’s administration went public Saturday with claims she had been harassed.
Charlotte Bennett, a low-level aide in the governor’s administration until November, told The New York Times Cuomo asked inappropriate questions about her sex life, including whether she ever had sex with older men, and made other comments she interpreted as gauging her interest in an affair.
Her accusation came days after another former aide, Lindsey Boylan, a former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor, elaborated on harassment allegations she first made in December. Boylan said Cuomo subjected her to an unwanted kiss and inappropriate comments about her appearance.
Cuomo, 63, said in a brief statement Saturday he had intended to be a mentor for Bennett, who is 25. He has denied Boylan’s allegations.
Over several hours Sunday, James and other leading party officials rejected two of Cuomo’s proposals for how an investigation might proceed. James said neither plan went far enough.
She instead demanded a formal referral that would give her office more authority to subpoena documents and witness testimony.