Breaking News: Federal Court in LaRoque (Kinston) Case Upholds Constitutionality of Voting Rights Act

You can find the 96 page opinion in LaRoque v. Holder at this link.  Judge Bates, who decided the Shelby County case, decided this case as well, but noted that the issues were different in this case, including issues of first impression:

This Court explained in Shelby County that Congress, the “coequal and representative branch of our Government,” has the preeminent constitutional role under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in determining the legislation needed to enforce those Amendments’ guarantees. See Shelby County, 2011 WL 4375001, at *80; Walters v. National Ass’n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 319 (1985); see also Nw. Austin II, 129 S. Ct. at 2513. Congress emphatically determined that the amendments were indeed necessary to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments’ guarantees: the amended Section 5 passed by a vote of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate. See 152 Cong. Rec. S8012 (daily ed. July 20, 2006); 152 Cong. Rec. H5143-5207 (daily ed. July 13, 2006). And, as the Court found with respect to the challenge to the reauthorization of the preclearance regime as a whole, Congress carefully and extensively justified its decisions to amend the statute to overturn or modify two
Supreme Court decisions interpreting Section 5. This Court declines to overturn that careful, well-supported judgment.

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