Jay English’s Post

I need people to stop trying to tell me that we don't have a race problem here in this country. And since I'm already on one right now, I'm gonna also need folks to stop quoting Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech if you're not willing to stand up and fight for what his dream actually was! Have you heard of the Voting Rights Act? This is the legislation that was passed in 1965 and was one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement. This Act undid decades of discriminatory Jim Crow laws and provided protection against racial gerrymandering. This is the legislation that was passed during the year that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, launched a campaign of civil disobedience in Selma, Alabama, to bring national attention to the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. Why am struggling with something that Dr. King fought for, and achieved, nearly 60 years ago? Because today, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that will effectively bar private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits. In other words, the right to sue for breaches of this specific law would effectively lie with the government alone. What?!?!? Their rationale is that the text of the Voting Rights Act does not explicitly contain language for “a private right of action,” or the right of private citizens to file lawsuits under the law. But, hey, let's just ignore 58 years of precedent and put this squarely back in the governments court. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever come across. Especially when we all know that the majority of challenges to discriminatory laws and racial gerrymandering have come from private citizens and civil rights groups. But, now, we're supposed to wait on our government to not just see & recognize the wrong that is being done, but to also file the lawsuit to fight against it? Yeah, ok. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, is quoted as saying, "For generations, private individuals have brought cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect their right to vote. The 8th Circuit has put the Voting Rights Act in jeopardy, tossing aside critical protections that voters fought and died for.” This decision will obviously be appealed to the Supreme Court, and my prayer is that they uphold the original intent of the law when it was first passed. However, if this stupidity stands, it will be basically telling us that we can keep The Voting Rights Act on the books, just with no legal way for a person like me to use it. Allowing a ruling like this to stand flies in the face of all that Dr. King stood for and would effectively turn his dream into nothing but a passing vision.