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Full-Text Articles in Civil Rights and Discrimination
Disparate Impact And Voting Rights: How Objections To Impact-Based Claims Prevent Plaintiffs From Prevailing In Cases Challenging New Forms Of Disenfranchisement, Jamelia Morgan
Faculty Articles and Papers
As this article will show, the reluctance of courts to accept evidence of "impact plus" stems in part from a concern that the remedies required by impact-based claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will involve essentialism and an affront to individual dignity. These concerns are animated in the vote dilution context where, in cases challenging the dilution of the minority vote, and not involving intentional vote dilution, objections have centered on the notion that Section 2's results test requires courts to make essentialist claims regarding minority and non-minority voting patterns and election choices. Such objections are misplaced …
The Geography Of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence And Implications For Vra Preclearance After Shelby County, Douglas M. Spencer, Christopher S. Elmendorf
The Geography Of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence And Implications For Vra Preclearance After Shelby County, Douglas M. Spencer, Christopher S. Elmendorf
Faculty Articles and Papers
The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This Article proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and who vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that …