“The Supreme Court backed one step away from a very steep cliff today when it avoided a constitutional challenge to a central part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).   However, the Court remained close to the edge, wrongly opining that the VRA raises ‘serious constitutional questions,’ setting up a future challenge to the Act.   In fact, as Constitutional Accountability Center lays out in a brief in NAMUDNO and in our new report, The Shield of National Protection, the text and history of the Civil War Amendments give Congress broad power to secure liberty, equality and the right to vote, and the Court in prior cases has gotten this text and history dead wrong in limiting congressional power in these areas.  Hopefully, in a subsequent case, the Court will finally get this text and history right.”

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Constitutional  Accountability Center (www.theusconstitution.org)  is a think tank, law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history.  Our amicus brief in NAMUDNO and our new report, The Shield of National Protection: The Text and History of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment,  are available, respectively, here and here.