Mon 2 Jun 2008
A federal court yesterday rejected the first legal challenge to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, in a case that legal scholars view as an important test of one of the country’s seminal pieces of civil rights legislation.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a municipal utility board in Texas, which argued that part of the law is costly and unconstitutional. Congress reauthorized the law in 2006.
The utility board is likely to appeal directly to the Supreme Court, offering opponents a chance to test the Voting Rights Act before a court that has grown more conservative in recent years.
“This has been about getting it to the Supreme Court,” said Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law. “Conservative opponents of the law have put a lot of eggs in this basket. This was set up as a test case.”