Attorney General Merrick Garland is out today with a message for Congress: Pass laws allowing the Justice Department to block state-level, Republican-backed voter integrity laws more easily.
“On this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we must say again that it is not right to erect barriers that make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote,” Garland wrote in an opinion article published Friday by the Washington Post. “And it is time for Congress to act again to protect that fundamental right.”
He added that the Justice Department “is using all its current legal authorities to combat a new wave of restrictive voting laws.”
However, Garland continued, it’s not so easy as it used to be.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1957 marked Congress’s first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction,” he wrote. “That law authorized the attorney general to sue to enjoin racially discriminatory denials of the right to vote. Although the Justice Department immediately put the law to use, it quickly learned that bringing case-by-case challenges was no match for systematic voter suppression.” He added, “By 1965, it was clear that protecting the right to vote required stronger tools. The Voting Rights Act provided them. Central to the law was its ‘preclearance’ provision, which prevented jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices from adopting new voting rules until they could show the Justice Department or a federal court that the change would have neither a racially discriminatory purpose nor a racially discriminatory result.”
The preclearance regime, Garland argued, “was enormously effective.”
“While it was in place, the Justice Department blocked thousands of discriminatory voting changes that would have curtailed the voting rights of millions of citizens in jurisdictions large and small,” he continued.
The Voting Rights Act gave the Justice Department enormous authority, but it was not without the necessary checks on power.
“Jurisdictions had the option to go to federal court to show that their voting changes were lawful,” Garland argued. “This ensured fairness and accountability, but without the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness that existed prior to 1965. It was a balance that worked and received broad support: Congressional reauthorizations of the act were signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, President Gerald Ford in 1975, President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and President George W. Bush in 2006.”
Then 2013 happened.
“That invaluable framework was upended in 2013, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder effectively eliminated the act’s preclearance protections,” Garland grumbled.
He added, “Without that authority, the Justice Department has been unable to stop discriminatory practices before they occur. Instead, the Justice Department has been left with costly, time-consuming tools that have many of the shortcomings that plagued federal law prior to 1965.”
Despite what Garland referred to as a “setback,” the Justice Department will continue to do whatever it can to fight GOP-backed voter integrity laws.
“But if the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provision were still operative, many of those laws would likely not have taken effect in the first place,” he grumbled further.
So, to ensure the Justice Department has the power and authority to strike down Republican-backed voting laws, Garland is calling on Congress now to do something about it.
