The Voting Rights Act is still alive after the Supreme Court heard a case on Section 5 last year and decided to do the right thing, ruling narrowly. The Court did not address the constitutional questions on the VRA last time at all but only came up with a rule to let areas bail out of Section 5 as long as there was no history of racial discrimination in voting there.
Well now, a new suit was just filed in which the only question addressed will be whether the Act is constitutional:
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, the Carolinians argued that Section 5 discriminates on the basis of race. The challengers also sought to have the case — LaRoque, et al., v. Holder (District Court docket 10-561) — decided by a three-judge Court. A news release describing the lawsuit is here.
The case looks like it will head to the Supreme Court after it's decided by the three-judge panel. The Act itself seems to be doing its job in this place. The City Council wanted to switch from partisan elections to open ones. Since they have to abide by Section 5 they must clear changes with the DOJ beforehand.
The Justice Department found that black voters in Kinston, who make up more than 62 percent of the city’s total voters, depend heavily upon having partisan elections in order to be able to have a chance to get their chosen candidates elected.
The DOJ denied their request, so they're suing to bring the constitutional question to court.
This seems like perhaps the worst time to do this kind of thing. We're in the middle of increased racial attacks and right wing militia threats of violence, as well as a few cases of vandalism and violence directed at citizens and the government.
There's a lot of tension over the fact that the President is a black guy. Obviously talks of secession are scary enough but now some people are trying to revert back to a confederacy in the Civil War days - by pretending they can fight against a federal law to give people health care.
The asshole governor in Virginia wants to remind everyone of the Confederate history (minus slavery) right now. This is not a great time to have a Supreme Court case on this issue. I don't actually think there should ever be. Congress extended it for 25 more years. It works.
Chief Justice Roberts has been on an anti-affirmative action crusade for most of his career. That's pretty much what this whole thing is about. He famously oversimplified the race issue when he wrote "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" in a school segregation case, where he also used Brown v. Board of Education's language to argue for segregation of schools.
I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with judicial crusades but definitely not right now. This is insane. This will (and should) piss off a lot of voters who could be disenfranchised through "softer" bigotry.
I don't have a very good feeling.