Now the Associated Press weighs in:
Supreme Court justices appeared reluctant Tuesday to expand protections
of a landmark voting rights law in a case from North Carolina.…
Three weeks before Election Day, the Supreme Court confronted a case
that asks how small minority populations can be and still elect the
candidates they want for local offices and Congress in areas where
votes tend to fall along racial lines.In the North Carolina
case, the justices are being asked to extend a provision of the 1965
Voting Rights Act to protect districts in which, together, black and
white Democrats can determine the outcome of elections. “They help to
diminish the amount of racial polarization over time, so that
eventually we won’t need to be looking at race at all in drawing
district lines,” North Carolina Solicitor General Christopher G.
Browning Jr. told the court in defense of the districts.The
court appeared divided in a familiar fashion. The more conservative
justices sounded reluctant to expand legal protections to these
districts, while their more liberal colleagues seemed more willing.Justice Anthony Kennedy, so often the key to the outcome, appeared once again to hold the balance of power on the court.
And
Kennedy appeared skeptical of the state’s position. “What’s the
authority that says you must consider race in drawing the districts,
assuming that you don’t have an existing…minority-majority district?”
Kennedy asked.
AP writer Mark Sherman offers this quip at the end of his piece:
Unmentioned Tuesday was the upcoming presidential election in which,
win or lose, a black candidate is certain to garner the votes of tens
of millions of whites.
