In Adam Liptak’s analysis of today’s Supreme Court decision in Shuette, he notes: “But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the longest and most significant dissent of her career, said the Constitution required special vigilance in light of the history of slavery, Jim Crow and ‘recent examples of discriminatory changes to state voting laws.'”
I hadn’t had a chance to carefully read Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, and that got me looking for the reference. There are a number of election cases mentioned in the dissent, including these references to the Shelby County decision, striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act.
11. Attempts by the majority to make it more difficult for the minority to exercise its right to vote are, sadly, not a thing of the past. See Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 15–17) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting) (describing recent examples of discriminatory changes to state voting laws, including a 1995 dual voter registration system in Mississippi to disfranchise black voters, a 2000 redistricting plan in Georgia to decrease black voting strength, and a 2003 proposal to change the voting mechanism for school board elections in South Carolina). Until this Court’s decision last Term in Shelby County, the preclearance requirement of §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 blocked those and many other discriminatory changes to voting procedures.
And:
Contrary to today’s decision, protecting the right to meaningful participation in the political process must mean more than simply removing barriers to participation. It must mean vigilantly policing the political process to ensure that the majority does not use other methods to prevent minority groups from partaking in that process on equal footing. Why? For the same reason we guard the right of every citizen to vote. If “[e]fforts to reduce the impact of minority votes, in contrast to direct attempts to block access to the ballot,” were “‘second generation barriers’” to minority voting, Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 5), efforts to reconfigure the political process in ways that uniquely disadvantage minority groups who have already long been disadvantaged are third-generation barriers.
And:
Race matters. Race matters in part because of the long history of racial minorities’ being denied access to thepolitical process. See Part I, supra; see also South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309 (1966) (describing racial discrimination in voting as “an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts ofour country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution”). And although we have made great strides, “voting discrimination still exists; no one doubtsthat.” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at __ (slip op., at 2).
Race also matters because of persistent racial inequality in society—inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic disparities. See Gratz, 539 U. S., at 298–300 (GINSBURG, J., dissenting) (cataloging the many ways in which “the effects of centuries of law sanctioned inequality remain painfully evident in our communities and schools,” in areas like employment, poverty, access to health care, housing, consumer transactions, and education); Adarand, 515 U. S., at 273 (GINSBURG, J., dissenting) (recognizing that the “lingering effects” of discrimination, “reflective of a system of racial caste only recently ended, are evident in our workplaces, markets, and neighborhoods”).
And race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man’sview of society when he spends his teenage years watching where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?”, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country.Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: “I do not belong here.”
In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination. This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carryout the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. It is this view that works harm, by perpetuating the facile notion that what makes race matter is acknowledging the simple truth that race does matter.