A group of professors, led by Feminist Law Prof Kathleen Bergin (South Texas College of Law) and including Feminist Law Profs Margaret Montoya (University of New Mexico) and Tracy McGaugh (South Texas College of Law), plans to submit the following letter to the Editor of the New York Times in response to its recent article on voting rights in Mississippi.
To the Editor:
We are writing in response to Adam Nossiter’s article, U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote. This article appeared on the front page of the New York Times Politics section on October 11. Its focus is a lawsuit initiated by the Department of Justice against the town of Macon, Mississippi where Black Democrats are accused of engaging in voter fraud and intimidation against Whites. We hope that the New York Times will take appropriate steps to correct the false impression created by Mr. Nossiter’s decision to focus exclusively on the situation in Macon without any reference to the context in which the case arose or an examination of the motivation behind the pending action.
First, the article’s exclusive focus on alleged voter irregularities in Macon implies that the greatest threat to democratic legitimacy comes from Blacks who control the political process by intimidating Whites. This is simply not the case. Earlier this year, the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act released a 125 page report documenting systematic and wide-spread abuse against minority voters. Commission Chair Bill Lann Lee and Commissioner Joe Rogers presented these findings to members of the House of Representatives prior to the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act in July. In March of this year, the Voter’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union released its own 887 page report listing nearly 300 law suits involving voter fraud, intimidation or dilution that it has litigated since the Voting Rights Act was last extended in 1982. None of these cases involved discrimination by people of color or language-minority groups. Failure to take this backdrop into account is both irresponsible and misleading.
Second, nowhere does the article question the logic of the DOJ’s decision to pursue a claim of voter intimidation in a jurisdiction where Black voters already outnumber White voters by 3 to 1. If there is any merit to concerns about election irregularities in Macon, it is more properly described as one of machine or party politics, not of race. Yet the article’s singular preoccupation with Black Democrats who wield an unusual amount of political power in Macon creates an impression that racism itself is somehow evenly allocated between Blacks and Whites. The testimony presented to Congress in support of the Voting Rights Act extension proves this assumption false, as does the very purpose and history behind the statute.
Third, even if racial”suppression”were an issue in Macon, your readers still deserve some exploration of why a perpetually under-funded civil rights agency is concentrating its efforts on such a patent exception to the rule. In how many voting districts in this country do non-whites have the power to manipulate the voting apparatus? If the DOJ were focused on efforts likely to have the greatest impact, it surely would not have brought a case under these atypical circumstances.
Finally, a responsible article would have explored the Bush Administration’s role in re-directing the DOJ’s voting rights projects. While Bush sought to gain political leverage by signing the Voting Rights Act extension into law, he has responded to the core concerns of far-right Republicans by obstructing enforcement of civil rights laws, including those designed to protect minority voters. In 2004, Bush named Gerald R. Reynolds and Abigail Thernstrom to head the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights after the Commission under previous leadership released a report critical of the Administration’s civil rights enforcement record. In 2006, both Reynolds and Thernstrom appeared before the Senate urging that pivotal provisions of the Voting Rights Act not be renewed. It is this posture, along with that of other far-right members of the Commission, that calls into question the ideological neutrality of the DOJ’s decision to focus on Macon.
Bush also opened up the DOJ’s Voting Rights Division to lawyers of similar mind. Hiring decisions once made by veteran lawyers are now closely overseen by Administration officials. Since this change was implemented in 2002, only 19 of the 45 lawyers who joined the DOJ’s most active litigation sections came to the job with any prior civil rights experience. Nine of them had established careers either defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or fighting against race-friendly policies. Conservative credentials also took on new importance. Eleven of the new lawyers belonged to the neo-conservative Federalist Society, seven belonged to the Republican National Lawyers Association, two of whom volunteered for Bush-Cheney campaigns. Others worked for prominent Republicans who themselves should be called to answer for their own abysmal civil rights record, including former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, former attorney general Edwin Meese, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, and Judge Charles Pickering.
More recently, it was prominent House Republicans from Texas, Mississippi and Georgia who led the effort to tank the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in July. The measure passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress, but 33 Republicans with close ties to the Bush Administration voted against it. Meanwhile, talk of making the statute’s pre-clearance provisions applicable on a permanent basis nationwide served as nothing more than a ploy by those who knew full well that such an extension would be the surest way to invite a constitutional challenge in light of recent Supreme Court precedent that gutted Congress’s power to remedy civil rights violations.
In sum, Mr. Nossiter’s article failed to evince an adequately informed understanding of the political complexities attendant to the DOJ’s decision to prosecute tiny Macon. In view of the magnitude of this omission, we sincerely hope that the Times will make its best efforts to correct the false and misleading impressions created by the article. While Macon may be properly included in a larger discussion of democracy, discrimination and voter disillusionment, the article as it stands presents voting rights issues, expressly in Macon and implicitly elsewhere, in a manner that is acontextual, ahistorical, and inherently unjust. The publication of the article was a disservice to your readership and, if left unremedied, is out of step with the finest traditions of your publication.
Professor Kathleen A. Bergin, South Texas College of Law
Professor Michael C. Duff, University of Wyoming College of Law
Professor Margaret Montoya, University of New Mexico
Professor Cedric Merlin Powell, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law
Professor Wendy B. Scott, North Carolina Central School of Law
Professor Paulette J. Williams, University of Tennessee, College of Law
Professor Mary Romero, School of Justice & Social Inquiry, Arizona State University
Professor Carla Pratt Penn State Dickinson School of Law
Professor Tracy McGaugh, South Texas College of Law
Professor Ruqaiijah A. Yearby, Loyola University Chicago, School of Law
Professor Sacha M. Coupet, Loyola University Chicago, School of Law
Other faculty who would like to be added as signatories should contact Professor Bergin via email (kbergin@stcl.edu) before 10:00 p.m. (EST) tonight, October 13, 2006.
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
