Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is ‘Perpetuation Of Racial Entitlement’
Last edited Wed Feb 27, 2013, 05:43 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Think Progress
Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is ‘Perpetuation Of Racial Entitlement’
WASHINGTON, DC — There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyer’s lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”
The comment came as part of a larger riff on a comment Scalia made the last time the landmark voting law was before the justices. Noting the fact that the Voting Rights Act reauthorization passed 98-0 when it was before the Senate in 2006, Scalia claimed four years ago that this unopposed vote actually undermines the law: “The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there.”
That was an unusual comment when it was made, but Scalia’s expansion on it today raises concerns that his suspicion of the Act is rooted much more in racial resentment than in a general distrust of unanimous votes. Scalia noted when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, it passed over 19 dissenters. In subsequent reauthorizations, the number of dissenters diminished, until it passed the Senate without dissent seven years ago. Scalia’s comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists. His inflammatory claim that the Voting Rights Act is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement” came close to the end of a long statement on why he found a landmark law preventing race discrimination in voting to be suspicious.
It should be noted that even one of Scalia’s fellow justices felt the need to call out his remark. Justice Sotomayor asked the attorney challenging the Voting Right Act whether he thought voting rights are a racial entitlement as soon as he took the podium for rebuttal.
A transcript of the oral argument will be available soon, and we will post Scalia’s quote in its full context. We will also post audio of Scalia’s words when they become available.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/27/1646891/scalia-voting-rights-act-is-perpetuation-of-racial-entitlement/
His choicest line today may have been this: “I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act.” Who does he think he is, Chris freaking Matthews? Since when is it a Justice’s job to divine when the people’s representatives are acting from pure motives, and when they are moved by crass “racial entitlements,” as he describes the guarantees that allowed millions of African Americans to vote for the first time? Call that what it is, but it sure as hell isn’t originalism. It’s just lawless free-styling.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/scalia-attacks-congress-for-renewing-voting-rights-act.php
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the Bench of the USSC. 
welcome to DU, angry citizen 
your dadSocialism?
Seriously the only conclusion you can come to is that the Corporate Powers actually do not want a healthy population. They want a population stressed and uncertain, and deprived. Paying through the nose to insurance companies, driven crazy with patching together health insurance, and limiting access to hospitals and medical providers, who are stressed as well. My 80 something MIL was agitating day in and day out about what would happen to Medicare if Obama was not elected. Why do we put someone who spent 45 years in civil service through that, at her age? Not to mention the rest of us? It is a lose-lose for all of us. But somebody is winning. Somebody who does not care about investing in the health of the people, not one little bit.
United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
I've been on an abolitionist tear for a few weeks.
How do we get rid of bigoted 'judges'? 
Last edited Wed Feb 27, 2013, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)
fat tony will be vote-wise neutered during this Presidency. I believe that's why he's acting out now...
In a way true. Certainly good for John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but he should be gone. The longer he sits, the more damage he does to the U.S. Peace.
have still been yes after considering your answer. I would not have cut it off to just data at some small period in time. I would have used all the empirical data in research studies. The purpose of the Voting Rights Law was enacted because of the South. Measures within the Voting Rights Law were placed there to strengthen the law because Southern Legislatures found ways to skirt around Federal Law for the purposes of Discrimination. There are measures in the Law to opt out, based on performance.
Racial Discrimination for the purposes of voting is also done on a political scale. That is clearly seen by the Party these judges against the Law are in. The last Election cycles are clear evidence of the Republican Party's systematic attempts on a larger scale to deny voting rights to minorities. And there should be a lot more cases from the DOJ, on a larger scale against the Republican Party. I would not play footsies with them. The DOJ in fact should have joined the International community, when it was invited in to monitor the U.S. Election by Civil Rights groups instead of being cowed by the Republican Party.
My stance is the Republican Party is dangerous to American Democracy and the gains it has made ever since the Civil War. The Republican Party has morphed in to the Party of States' Rights, dominated by white supremacists, mostly from southern Politicians. The attempts by at least four Justices on the Court are clear evidence to me. The same Court that broke precedent and interfered in the Presidential election of 2000 within a state.
The bottom line is the Voting Rights Act is the clear Law of the land. I don't know why it is being revisited every incremental stage by this Supreme Court, when abusers of the Law seek reprieve? It has been clearly Constitutional by other U.S. Supreme Courts ever since enacted. That is why this has the appearance of politicization. They appear to want the law weaken. What is the difference in weakening the law for everyone that wants to break laws because it happens somewhere else? If anything the law is working very well. If anything, the Law should be used more in other places. And if it did, it will probably not be good for the Republican Party because they appear to be the biggest offenders currently.
I can imagine the pride you felt.
Thank you for sharing and for continuing to fight. 
Oh, and welcome to DU!
well done, dem in Texas 
All of the conservatives have been on the negative against Section 5.
If it was just nut job Scalia, I wouldn't worry, but it's the conservative majority: Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito that I worry about.
I don't believe President Obama filed a brief as he did with the DOMA case the other day. Why didn't he???
Also, election 2012 fiascos were not argued before the court
So strike it down because now there is something to be gained politically?
Scalia gives scumbags a bad name.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_2768942.html
So Fat Tony is only off by 1,590 years.
Jon Stewart may have to adapt his "19th Century News" segment and put on a toga for "4th Century News"!
So now we're turning back the clock on another issue?! This was the most successful civil rights law in history, so of course Scalia finds a reason to be against it. And on the day we honor Rosa Parks, too... 
outrageous.
This is what we're up against.
Impeachment--what would that take.
