Court limits U.S. authority to block election-system changes
By Laurie Asseo, Associated Press, 01/24/00
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court today limited the federal government's authority to squelch changes in state and local elections as discriminatory when the new plans would leave racial and ethnic minorities no worse off.
By a 5-4 vote in a Louisiana case, the justices said the necessary federal approval of such changes cannot be withheld when new election district lines fail, for discriminatory reasons, to make things better.
The court upheld the current system of electing the Bossier Parish, La., school board's 12 members. In doing so, the justices clarified -- and refused to extend -- federal authority to reject proposed election system changes in states and counties covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Government clearance of election changes has a "limited meaning" and "is nothing more than a determination that the voting change is no more dilutive than what it replaces, and therefore cannot be stopped in advance" under one section of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.
That section of the law "prevents nothing but backsliding, and preclearance under (the law) affirms nothing but the absence of backsliding," Scalia wrote.
After an election change is cleared, it still can be challenged under another section of the voting rights law, Scalia wrote.
No other school board election is planned until the current system gets revamped after the 2000 but the court said that fact did not render the dispute moot, or legally irrelevant. That plan will serve as a baseline for evaluating the next voting plan, the court said.
The case was a tough one for the justices to decide. They twice heard arguments in it. After a first argument last April, the court ordered lawyers for both sides back to reargue it in October.
The Bossier Parish school board for years has had its members elected to four-year terms from 12 different districts. About 20 percent of the parish's population is black, concentrated in two areas, but none of the 12 districts has a black majority.
As of 1990, no black had ever been elected to the school board.
After the 1990 census required a redrawing of the school board election map, the local NAACP chapter proposed creating two black-majority districts. The school board opted instead for a new map in 1992 with no such district, the same map that had been adopted by the parish's chief governing body, called the police jury.
Even though the police jury's plan had received Justice Department approval required by the 1965 law, the school board's proposed redistricting plan did not. Government lawyers decided the plan would dilute minority voting strength because it would not maximize it as would a plan containing two black-majority districts.
The Voting Rights Act's Section 5 allows the federal government to veto proposed changes if they are deemed to have a discriminatory "purpose or effect." The act's Section 2 is more stringent, and prohibits any voting practice that would dilute minority voters' clout.
In a 1997 decision involving the same Bossier Parish dispute, the nation's highest court said Justice Department lawyers cannot refuse to approve a proposal under Section 5 by deciding that the change would violate Section 2. The court said then that a proposed change has a prohibited "effect" only if it would be retrogressive -- leaving minority voters worse off than they are under a current election system.
Today, Scalia said, "This explains why the sole consequence of failing to obtain preclearance is continuation of the status quo. To deny preclearance to a plan that is not retrogressive -- no matter how unconstitutional it may be -- would risk leaving in effect a status quo that is even worse."
His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
Dissenting were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Writing for the four, Souter said, "The behavior of Bossier Parish is a plain effort to deny the voting equality that the Constitution just as plainly guarantees."
"Now executive and judicial officers of the United States will be forced to preclear illegal and unconstitutional voting schemes patently intended to perpetuate discrimination," Souter added.
While the Louisiana case wended its way through federal courts, two black candidates were elected to the 12-member school board in 1994 and were re-elected in 1998, along with a third black candidate.
The case is Reno vs. Bossier Parish School Board, 98-405.
