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NW Austin Municipal Utility Dist. No. 1 v. Holder (formerly v. Mukasey, v. Gonzales)

LDF Defends the Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act

September 17, 2007

Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) will defend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crown jewel of American democracy, before three federal judges in the Nation's Capitol. The defense is being mounted on behalf of several minority voters in Texas who are represented by the nation's leading civil rights organizations and a leading Washington law firm.

The case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Gonzales, was filed by a small utility district in Austin, Texas just days after Congress overwhelmingly voted to reauthorize the federal oversight provisions of the Voting Rights Act last summer.

The Voting Rights Act is the most effective tool for protecting minority voters against persistent voting discrimination that has historically employed constantly shifting techniques to impede minority voting. Even before the ink dried, however, opponents sought to invalidate Section 5, the federal oversight provision at the Act's core.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act covers the entire state of Texas as a result of its well-documented history voting discrimination. As a covered jurisdiction, all proposed voting changes in the State must be submitted for preclearance to the Department of Justice or a federal court before the changes can take effect. The utility district seeks to end this federal oversight designed to block and deter discriminatory voting changes, and also challenges the constitutionality of the "preclearance" provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

"Everyone who cares about the long distance traveled on the road to greater equality in this nation needs to take note of this case," said LDF Director-Counsel and President, Theodore Shaw. "If Congress lacks the power to continue the unfinished work of eradicating the discrimination in voting that made the promise of equality illusory for a century, then the promise itself expires," said Shaw.

Throughout its history, LDF has worked to protect the fragile gains in minority voting rights. "Congress did not take its responsibility lightly - once again it compiled an extensive record illustrating the nature and scope of the harms that pointed to the continuing need for the preclearance protections," said Jacqueline A. Berrien, LDF Associate Director-Counsel.

"It is difficult to imagine that a utility district could now successfully recycle previously rejected legal arguments to end the reckoning with our history" Shaw concluded.

African-American residents of the utility district, represented by LDF, intervened in the lawsuit to defend the Act's constitutionality. In addition to LDF, minority residents are being represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, NAACP, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, People for the American Way, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, ACLU, and Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr.

Debo P. Adegbile, LDF Director of Litigation, and Paul R. Q. Wolfson, Esq. Of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr will argue the case on behalf of minority voters in the district.