By Stacey Patton

Washington D.C. – Why can’t America erase decades-old civil rights laws now that the nation has elected a black president?

Doesn’t President Barack Obama’s historic achievement prove that America is a far different society from the 1960s?

Can’t we stop providing special treatment to certain people and expect that everyone is treated equal?

And should states in the Deep South and other areas of the country still be required to bear a “badge of shame” because they were once showpieces of flagrant racial discrimination?

In less than three weeks, the Supreme Court will consider these questions as it hears arguments for invalidating a critical component of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was designed to protect minority voters. This June, the court is expected to decide whether Section 5 of the act, which requires certain jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination to pre-clear any changes in election practices or voting rules before the Department of Justice or a federal court, is unconstitutional.

Proponents of Section 5 argue that without it, district lines can be drawn to prevent minorities from winning; polling places can be moved to make it difficult for minority voters to get to; and voter ID requirements and other measures can be imposed to suppress the minority vote.

Recently, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) has been working to educate the media, the public and civil rights community about the implications of what will be the most important election law case in recent history. Last week, LDF and the American Constitution Society co-sponsored a lively mid-afternoon panel discussion with leading civil rights attorneys and politicians at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Speaking before a rapt audience were John Payton, LDF’s President and Director-Counsel; Nina Perales, Southwest Regional Counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Congressman Melvin Watt of North Carolina; and moderator Kristen Clarke, co-director of LDF’s political participation group. Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. from Wisconsin had planned to attend, but could not due to voting sessions being held on Capitol Hill.

Their discussion centered on the case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, which the Supreme Court will hear on April 29. This tiny utility district located in Travis County, Texas, which is covered by Section 5, seeks to end its pre-clearance responsibilities, arguing that the provision is unconstitutional; that it imposes undue legal and financial burdens on jurisdictions which it covers; and that the election of President Barack Obama proves that this old civil rights measure has outlived its utility.

Since 1965, Congress and five presidents have acted to preserve this legislation to prevent racially discriminatory barriers that deny or abridge citizens’ right to vote. The NAMUNDO case is the latest in a series of challenges to the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. All previous challenges have been rejected by the Supreme Court, and the contention that the country no longer needs Section 5, the heart of the Voting Rights Act, cannot be reconciled with the evidence to be argued before the court.

“We have had a long history of how cleverly states, primarily states in the Deep South, figured out how to evade the 15th Amendment to devastating effect,” said John Payton. “And the effect was that African Americans and Latinos were literally disenfranchised.”

During the panel discussion, Payton, Perales and Watt each cited old schemes, including poll taxes, literacy tests, the Grandfather clauses, and violent forms of voter intimidation used to disenfranchise black and Latino voters. They maintained that Section 5 must be upheld, because it prevents modern-day tricks that covertly and overtly attempt to dilute the rights of minorities in areas where they have the potential to assert political authority.

“In recent years, hundreds of proposed changes in practices or procedures in certain districts have been caught by Section 5,” said Perales. “If there had been no Section 5, they all would have gone into effect.”

“This isn’t about 1870 or 1880 or 1890,” said Payton. “This is about recent incidents in all of these districts. You can’t just say ‘stop discriminating.’ We see trick after trick after trick. Interests exist to try to take advantage of our democracy and pervert it with schemes that would disenfranchise folks.”

Since 1982, there have been well over 1,000 discriminatory electoral practices in the covered jurisdictions that were blocked by Section 5, hundreds which clearly involved intentional discrimination.

The pre-clearance requirement applies to nine states – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia and includes counties and towns in seven other states. Fifteen jurisdictions in Virginia have been allowed to “bail out” of the requirement because they were able to demonstrate to the federal government that they have been free of discriminatory rules, suits and complaints for at least a decade.

Watt spoke briefly about Senate and House hearings held prior to Congress to examine the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006. After hearing 17, 000 pages of evidence detailing efforts to discriminate, Congress concluded by a 390-33 vote in the House and a 98-0 vote in the Senate, that certain temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act were no longer needed, but Section 5 was still necessary to prevent minority citizens from being “deprived of the opportunity to exercise their right to vote, or [having] their votes diluted, undermining the significant gains made by minorities in the last 40 years.”

Congress also learned in 2006 that gains in minority registration often lead to the use of sophisticated forms of purposeful discrimination designed to cancel out minority strength. Perales noted that, in the recent case arising from Texas, minority voters are often the most likely to face discrimination when they are gaining numerical strength and are on the verge of exercising newfound political power. She also cited examples of entrenched resistance to minority rights at the local levels in Texas.

For example, for over three decades, county officials in Waller County have sought to prevent students at the historically black Prairie View A&M University from voting by threatening them with arrest. The City of Seguin similarly tried to thwart minority participation between 1978 and 1993. Then, after the 2000 census revealed that Latinos had become a majority in five of the eight city council districts, Seguin blocked Latinos from electing a majority of council members by dismantling Latino-majority districts.

Latinos in Arizona also experienced widespread discrimination when attempting to vote in 2004. Poll workers asked Latinos, but not whites, for identification. Trucks with megaphones were parked outside heavily-Latino precincts and the drivers warned residents that they would be deported if they wrongfully registered to vote, as police cars circled polling places.

Similar tactics were used in black neighborhoods. In 2005, literature was disseminated in Danville, Virginia threatening to lynch African Americans and warning that if residents “didn’t vote a certain way, things could happen to you.”

Both Clarke and Payton pointed to recent schemes in the 2008 election, highlighting polarized voting results in states covered by Section 5.

“Exit polling results of those states that are fully covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act are consistent with other evidence of significant voting discrimination in these particular regions of the country,” Clarke noted.

While Obama was the preferred candidate of choice among blacks, he enjoyed the majority of white support in only 18 of 50 states. He won only about one in five white votes in the Southern states wholly or partly covered by Section 5.

“The election was a very significant event in our nation’s history,” said Payton.  “It wasn’t a fluke.  It says very good things about where we are as a country.  But this case is about whether or not African Americans and Latinos are part of our democracy. Either we are or we aren’t.  That’s the work that Section 5 does.”

“We predict a win,” said Perales. “We have the weight of history, the weight of justice, and the weight of the record on our side.”

Stacey Patton is Senior Editor and Writer for TheDefendersOnline and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.