Last summer, the Supreme Court invalidated the Voting Rights Act’s (VRA) most powerful provision, known as Section 5. And in the wake of that ruling, msnbc reported on signs that the right would next set its sights on the landmark civil rights law’s other key pillar, essentially rendering the VRA a dead letter. That assault is now officially underway—just in time to stymie several high-stakes challenges to voter ID laws.
Two leading conservative legal activists argued in a memo published this week by the Heritage Foundation that the provision at issue, Section 2, should be construed so narrowly that it would be able to stop only the most blatant forms of racial discrimination in voting. And the memo, written by Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky and Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity, may aim to lay the groundwork for an even more far-reaching claim: The prominent election law scholar Rick Hasen, no alarmist on voting rights, described it as a step “on the road to arguing for the unconstitutionality of Section 2.”
“Now that Section 5 is essentially gone, it is time for the attack on Section 2,” Hasen added.