The Supreme Court seems poised to get rid of one of the most basic rights Americans enjoy, according to a new column.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie recently wrote that the high court appears “quite likely” to finish killing the Voting Rights Act during its next term. The law was signed as a complement to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and guaranteed political equality for non-white voters.
“It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history,” Bouie wrote. “It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education, and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.”
The law has been under attack since it was signed, Bouie noted. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has been one of the people leading the charge, as he voted with the court’s conservative bloc to gut a key part of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 case Shelby v. Holder, Bouie added.
The op-ed notes several impacts the Voting Rights Act has had since its creation. For example, it prohibited laws that restricted voting based on race or color, ended literacy tests, and provided broad legal protections to people of color. This led to a sharp increase in voter participation in former Confederate states.
“The Supreme Court’s war on the Voting Rights Act precedes Trump but it is simpatico with his aims,” Bouie wrote. “The court’s steady effort to make the law an artifact of the past is of a piece with its broad expansion of executive power for the current president.”
“Both work to undermine the basis for this more politically equal era of American democracy and clear the path to an American autocracy,” he added.