Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a speech this morning that the Justice Department will seek to reinstate "preclearance" for changes to voting laws in Texas -- and he plans on doing the same in other states.
In a speech to the Urban League in Philadelphia, the attorney general said the Justice Department is asking a federal court in San Antonio to require the state of Texas to obtain approval in advance before putting future voting changes in place.
This requirement to obtain "pre-approval" from either the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes to voting laws is available when intentional voting discrimination is found.
It is the department's first action to protect voting rights following the Supreme Court's decision on June 25, "but it will not be our last," Holder said in prepared remarks.
"Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the court's ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law's remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected."
Holder said that based on evidence of intentional racial discrimination presented last year in the redistricting case in Texas, "we believe that the state of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices."
Once again, this Justice Department blatantly disregards the rule of law to fight political hack Eric Holder's battles. The Supreme Court handed down a well-reasoned decision striking down the 1965 formula for determining which states must obtain preclearance from the DOJ, but now Eric Holder will try to reinstate preclearance for those previously covered states using lower courts. This is what "it will not be our last" means.
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Whether he's successful or not, Eric Holder has launched an all-out assault on 10th amendment states' rights and proven his lack of respect for this nation's highest Court. This administration may be more hostile to states' rights than any other in history, especially when it comes to the rights of those states below the Mason-Dixon. Federalism means letting states write their own voting laws -- this is an essential element of our Republic. The Court rightly eliminated a formula that eviscerated those essential rights, but Eric Holder is flouting that decision. Shame on him.
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