After arguments regarding the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Louisiana v. Callais last October, I wrote the likely holding striking racially gerrymandered voting districts would affect the West.Unsurprisingly, following Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s 6-3 opinion, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray advised Fremont County that its use of a court-ordered racially gerrymandered commissioner district violates the Constitution. Thus, while most focused on Democrats’ loss of nearly 19 southern congressional seats, all the VRA’s race-based districts are at risk. As I advised Cowboy State Daily’s Jack Nichols, most of the public knows Democrats in the South blocked compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to vote regardless of “race or color” and Congress, via the VRA, enforced that guarantee. Few realize that, over the years, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent lawyers across the country demanding race-based county commissioner districts. I was privileged to represent rural counties in Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, defending against those efforts.
CIVIL RIGHTS COSPLAYER JUSTIN PEARSON MELTS DOWN OVER TENNESSEE ‘COLOR-BLIND’ REDISTRICTING
In Blaine County, Montana, notwithstanding that no American Indian was denied the right to register, vote, or run for office; the newly elected commissioner won 98% of the American Indian vote; and the elected sheriff was an American Indian, a federal court ordered a racially gerrymandered district. In Alamosa County, Colorado, however, the federal district court agreed that Anglo and Hispanic voters were divided on socio-economic, not racial, lines. The Bush administration did not appeal our victory.
