Letters: Supreme hypocrisy on the Voting Rights Act

Re “Justices rein in Voting Rights Act,” June 26

The decision to effectively invalidate the Voting Rights Act is the Roberts court’s most hypocritical ruling.

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices have said that nine unelected judges should not overrule the voters’ elected representatives unless the Constitution demands it. Here, the court threw out a 98-0 Senate vote in 2006 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, thousands of pages of congressional voting rights research and almost 50 years of effective legislation.

Five justices state that, in their view, circumstances no longer warrant voting rights protections, ironically because the Voting Rights Act has been so effective. Millions of minority voters whose districts have been gerrymandered and whose polling places and hours have been cynically eroded in the last few years will be shocked to hear that protections are no longer needed.

So much for a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Ken Goldman

Beverly Hills

Thank goodness we have Antonin Scalia and the four other conservative justices on the Supreme Court to protect us from the “racial entitlement” of free and unfettered voting.

Now that racial discrimination has apparently been eliminated from our great nation, it’s time that we stopped using the Voting Rights Act. It seems the Supreme Court believes we can now rely on the good intentions of the states that historically imposed race-based voting requirements designed to disenfranchise nonwhites.

Two hours after the Supreme Court announced its decision, Texas advanced proposals to revive its restrictive voter ID requirements and its gerrymandered districts. What wonderful news for opponents of democracy.

Of course, if there is any doubt about states’ ability to protect voting rights, we can be confident that the GOP majority in the House will take action. Right?

James U. Mundy III

Inglewood

Conservatives see striking down a key protection of the Voting Rights Act as crucial for their chances in future elections. Instead, they ought to really look toward the future and offer an agenda the majority of Americans might get behind.

What a novel idea.

Dennis Grossman

Woodland Hills

ALSO:

Letters: The ‘old’ LAPD wasn’t racist

Letters: Immigration starts with jobs

Letters: A climate-change turning point