The Supreme Court’s recent decision to cut key parts of the Voting Rights Act has already led to a rush of redistricting across the South, but it has implications for Illinois too. WNIJ’s Peter Medlin talked with Northern Illinois University professor Scot Schraufnagel about that and a bill Senator Dick Durbin has introduced multiple times to restore the Voting Rights Act.
NIU’s Scot Schraufnagel (SS): The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has different sections to it, and Section 4 provided a formula that said that if states had participated in discriminatory voting practices of any kind, they would then need pre-clearance [from the federal government] for any changes in their laws. This was the Shelby County v. Holder decision. What the Supreme Court said is that formula, that has been used and had been updated a couple of times, is out of date.
WNIJ’s Peter Medlin (PM): Can you talk a little bit about just what Durbin’s ‘John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act’ would do and how that compares to the original version of the Voting Rights Act?
(SS): What the Durbin legislation did was tried to create a new formula that would specify the kind of voting irregularities and violations that would now be considered grounds for the need for pre-clearance of changes to state’s voting laws. When this [Shelby County] decision was handed down, everybody, I think, knew that there's no way we're going to be able to pass a new formula in today's sort of poisoned or partisan legislative environment. But Durbin, to his credit, tried. He was made an effort to develop a new formula to replace the old one.
(PM): As recently as last year, he introduced the legislation.
(SS): Yeah, right. But now this is a very different issue than the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, which has to do with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
(PM): Now that we have this case that just got decided, Louisiana v. Callais, do you think that would cause Durbin’s legislation to have to recalibrate? Do you think they're second guessing if, even if it passed, it would be considered unconstitutional based on the way the Supreme Court is reading the Voting Rights Act at this point?
(SS): So, the Durbin legislation, let's assume for a second that we could get that passed, and so we would create a new formula for Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. If the formula points to you, then you're going to need to get pre-clearance of any changes to your voting laws. That could still be a factor. There's no reason why that wouldn't still work as a law.
This recent decision could have been decided in a way that would apply to this Louisiana case and this Louisiana case only, but that's not what the majority opinion does. It’s got implications because there are majority-minority districts in local government here in Illinois, around the country, all of those are ripe for a challenge now.
(PM): Oh, really? So, even in Illinois? What could that look like on the local level?
(SS): If there was a city in in Illinois that wanted to try to make sure that Black residents got some sort of representation, and they drew lines in a manner to try to make that happen, those lines could be challenged now.
(PM): Like a city council district?
(SS): Council races and county commission races and the like, especially if someone could make the case that the intent was a majority-minority district.
(PM): City government, I mean, we deal with these same boundary drawings with school boards too, all sorts of local government bodies.
(SS): Absolutely, yeah.
