该谣言来源:
国际在线专稿：据德国《明镜周刊》6月25日报道，美国亚拉巴马州最高法院于24日取消了关于黑人选举权法的核心条款，该州的黑人将不再拥有投 票选举资格。此消息一出，立刻引起轩然大波。美国国家有色人种发展协会（National Association of the Advancement of Colored People）成员到法院前抗议，民权人士则担心回到过去的黑暗时代。总统奥巴马也表示深深遗憾。
一直致力于维护黑人权利的民主党议员约翰?雷维斯（John Lewis）表示，“法院对1965年的选举权法案进行了致命一击”，总统奥巴马也表达了非同寻常的不满：“我对最高法院的这一决定感到非常失望”，副总 统拜登和第一位非洲裔美国司法部长埃里克?霍尔德（Eric Holder）表示震惊：“选举歧视依然存在”。此外，左翼法官也进行了强烈抗议，一位法官把这一决定这比作废除了警察。公民权维护者沙普顿 （Sharpton）接受电视采访时表示，“这一决定把马丁?路德?金的梦击碎了”。
选举歧视在亚拉巴马州屡见不鲜，在该州的卡莱拉市，尽管23%的公民是黑人，但全市仅有一名黑人议员，市长也是白人。这主要是当地白人 政客操纵选举的结果。按照1965年选举法案的规定，在一些存在种族歧视历史的地区，应该设立国家监督机构，当时最高法院也通过了这一决定。但是一些州和 地区认为这是违反宪法并要求议会寻找新的“模式”。但由于议会中也是由白人在主导，因此长久以来此事并无进展。（葛文元）
以下为辟谣:
美国中文网6月25日援引雅虎新闻报道称，25日，美国最高法院否决了长达48年的《投票权法案》中确保少数族裔投票权的一个关键部分。美国总统奥巴马对决议表达了不满，称其为“历史的倒退”。
据报道，美国最高法院以5票支持4票反对的投票结果废除了该项法案的第4条。在裁决书上，法官的审判意见写道，该条例中所规定的投票程序和对于少数族裔的歧视描述已经不适用于当下环境。
对《投票权法案》的审议焦点还集中在法律的第5条。第5条要求州和地方政府在做出影响投票的改变之前必须得到司法部或联邦法院的许可或事先批准。这一规定主要是针对历史上在投票中出现过严重的族歧视问题的最南部几个州和其他一些州制定的。
近些年来，被“投票权法”覆盖的一些州的保守派组织和政府官员最近提出，这个法律在当今社会已经过时，没有必要再存在下去。布奇•埃利斯(Butch Ellis)是阿拉巴马州谢尔比郡检察官， 其于2001年向联邦最高法院提出诉讼，经过首都哥伦比亚特区的联邦地区法院和上诉法院，2013年2月27日上达联邦最高法院。
许多民权人 士都认为，该项判决将进一步阻碍少数族裔投票权利。作为美国历史上首位非裔总统，奥巴马对于最高法院的裁决表示不满。“今天的决定显然是一个倒退，但是并 不代表我们渴望结束投票歧视的努力将就此结束。”“我呼吁国会能够通过立法，保证每个美国公民都有投票的平等权利。”
《投票权法案》背景知识：
1965年8月6号，美国总统约翰逊签署了1965年《投票权法案》，其中规定，任何人都不应该因种族和肤色而被剥夺投票权。《投票权法案》把阻碍投票 定为非法，并且允许受害者控告地方政府和州政府。同时还授权联邦官员在有种族歧视纪录的管辖区域内密切监督选举。 1965年的《投票权法案》被认为是国会通过的最有效的法律之一。 国会在1870年通过了宪法15条修正案，明确给予有色人种投票权。但是，在最南部诸州，非洲裔美国人因受到读写能力测试以及投票税的歧视，参与投票仍困 难重重。(实习编辑：张雅婷 审核：谭利娅)
今日美国报导
Supreme Court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act
supreme court voting rights
(Photo: H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY)
Story Highlights
After nearly 50 years, major civil rights law dealt a possibly fatal blow
Divided court says Congress failed to account for how “our country has changed”
Democrats say they will seek to reinstate federal election oversight
WASHINGTON – A bitterly divided Supreme Court drove a stake through the heart of the landmark Voting Rights Act Tuesday, striking down a coverage formula that Congress has used to monitor states with a history of discrimination.
Declaring that “our country has changed in the past 50 years,” Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four other conservatives said the 1965 law cannot be enforced unless Congress updates it to account for a half-century of civil rights advances.
The court’s 5-4 ruling in the case from Alabama frees states and municipalities with a history of racial discrimination from having to clear changes in voting procedures with the federal government. That restriction has applied to nine states and parts of six others, mostly in the South.
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“Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices,” Roberts said. “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” he wrote.
“Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices”
— Chief Justice John Roberts
The decision came in the second of two major cases involving race to come before the high court this term. In the other, decided Monday, the court reaffirmed that affirmative action is constitutional but instructed lower-court judges to look far more critically at whether universities can prove their use of racial preferences is the only way to achieve a diverse student body.
Tuesday’s opinion did not invalidate the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” requirement outright. Instead, Roberts said Congress failed to account for broad changes in the nation’s civil rights landscape since it first laid out its method for determining which states and counties would be covered. That failure, Roberts wrote, left the court “with no choice” but to invalidate Section 4 of the law, which spells out which states face that additional scrutiny.
President Obama swiftly condemned the decision and called on Congress to work around it.
“For nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act – enacted and repeatedly renewed by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress – has helped secure the right to vote for millions of Americans,” Obama said. “Today’s decision invalidating one of its core provisions upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.”
Attorney General Eric Holder said the decision is “a serious setback for voting rights.” Other parts of the voting law “cannot totally fill the void left by today’s Supreme Court ruling,” he said.
The decision leaves Congress an opening to reinstate federal oversight: Lawmakers are free to come up with a new formula “based on current conditions” to salvage the federal oversight requirement, Roberts wrote.
But on Capitol Hill, even Democrats who support the Voting Rights Act said passing new legislation was a very long shot at best. Lawmakers are divided and frequently stalemated over issues ranging from taxes to immigration to a routine farm bill.
“Make no mistake about it, this is a back door way to gut the Voting Rights Act,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “As long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance.”
“… the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated”
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in dissent
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a lengthy dissent tracing the history of recent voting discrimination, said Congress already had more than enough justification for singling out some states and not others.
“Recognizing that large progress has been made, Congress determined, based on a voluminous record, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated,” she wrote. “In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’ decision.”
The decision met with swift condemnation from civil rights advocates, who accused the court’s conservatives of destroying a law that has been responsible for helping to stamp out discrimination at the ballot box.
“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation’s most important and effective civil rights laws,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades.”
Roberts, joined by justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, said federal election oversight is a deep and unusual intrusion into states’ normal ability to manage their own affairs, justified only by pervasive voting discrimination when the law was enacted. He said that Congress had not adequately justified singling out the same states for extra scrutiny.
State officials through the Deep South hailed the decision.
“The Supreme Court today rightly recognized that Alabama and other covered jurisdictions could not be treated unequally based on things that happened decades ago,” said Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.
“This is a victory for all voters, as all states can now act equally, without some having to ask for permission or being required to jump through the extraordinary hoops demanded by federal bureaucracy,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s lone African American, wrote in a separate opinion that he was willing to go farther and completely invalidate the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement, known as Section 5. The court’s narrower decision, he said, “needlessly prolongs the demise of that provision.”
The Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson — with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. standing near — in the wake of the violence and bloodshed that marked the 1950s and 1960s throughout the South.
It outlawed the types of voting practices that were common in many states, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and set up legal and regulatory processes to overturn them.
The steel spine of the law was Section 5, which required certain states and municipalities to get federal permission before making changes in voting practices. Before it was invalidated on Tuesday, Section 4 of the law laid out which parts of the country would be subject to that requirement.
Under a formula devised to capture those states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, along with Arizona and Alaska, emerged with what they now consider a scarlet letter. The law was reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006 with only minor changes.
But the Supreme Court’s majority finally lost patience with lawmakers who had refused to update the list of states and municipalities deemed discriminatory, despite wholesale gains in the South by blacks and other minority voters and elected officials.
The ruling tosses the ball back to Congress, which could try to update a coverage formula based on 1972 data. Few observers, however, expect lawmakers to pick and choose among states and municipalities, even if they could overcome political inertia.
The court’s conservatives, led by Roberts, had signaled their intentions during oral arguments in February. They expressed disdain for a geographic formula last updated in 1972 that forces most of the Deep South — but also certain municipalities from Florida to Alaska — to check even the relocation of polling places with the Department of Justice.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s perennial swing vote, likened the states’ plight to being “under the trusteeship of the United States government.” Justice Antonin Scalia drew gasps inside the courtroom when he referred disdainfully to “racial entitlements.”
And Roberts had long ago signaled his impatience with laws that give minorities a leg up on whites. In a 2007 decision on public school integration, he famously declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Roberts and the court had punted on the issue four years ago, ruling that a Texas water district — and any municipality, for that matter — could get out from under Section 5 by demonstrating 10 years of good behavior. More than 200 municipalities have done so since the law’s inception.
Even then, however, Roberts had warned that “things have changed in the South” and the pre-clearance requirements and coverage formula “raise serious constitutional questions.”
The new case came to the court with two lower court strikes against Shelby County’s challenge. In the most recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled last year that the coverage formula “is not perfect, but the fit was hardly perfect in 1965.”
The Obama administration warned the court not to mess with Congress’ legislative authority. “Invidious racial discrimination is the most pernicious form of governmental discrimination prohibited by the Constitution,” the government’s brief said. That puts Congress “at the zenith of its constitutional authority.”
Civil rights advocates and the court’s left-leaning justices noted that the provision was used as recently as last year to beat back photo ID laws, redistricting plans and restrictions on early voting. Without it, they said, states could resume discriminatory practices.
But opponents of the law argued that the types of state and local election laws that continue to draw fire today “exist to a greater degree outside those covered jurisdictions than they do inside the jurisdictions,” said Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, who helped initiate Shelby County’s lawsuit.
Both sides agree that progress has been made: Black voter turnout topped white turnout in last year’s presidential election and was strongest in some of the Southern states subjected to the strictest oversight under the Voting Rights Act.
Minorities also have been elected to local offices in record numbers, thanks to the creation of so-called “majority-minority” districts. In 1965, the 11 states of the Old Confederacy, stretching from Virginia to Texas, had a total of three black state legislators. By 2009, the number had grown to 321, or 18% of the total, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But over the same period, Southern legislatures that were overwhelmingly Democratic in 1965 have turned Republican. Today, the GOP controls both houses of the legislatures in all 11 states.
In recent years, the number of objections by the Justice Department to states’ voting changes has declined dramatically. In 1976, there were 64 objections, including 30 in Texas alone. In recent years, the number dropped to five or less. While there were 10 objections last year, this year has produced only one.
Meanwhile, the number of municipalities that have “bailed out” of Section 5 by maintaining a clean record on voting rights for 10 years has risen. From 1998 to 2008, only Virginia municipalities were excused from federal oversight. In the last three years, they were joined by several in California, Texas, Alabama, and the entire state of New Hampshire.
The law’s defenders say Section 5 prevented Texas, Florida and South Carolina from enacting new voting restrictions in 2012. This year, they say, it stands as a bulwark against similar discrimination. In Beaumont, Texas, a school board election was canceled to prevent white candidates from running unopposed in three majority-black districts. In North Carolina, lawmakers have proposed new restrictions on voter identification, registration and early voting.
A law professor says Chief Justice John Roberts showed his contempt for Congress in the majority opinion that struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. (June 25)
The remainder of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t challenged in the case.The law still will provide for legal challenges to voting changes deemed discriminatory in any state. But those after-the-fact challenges can be costly and time-consuming. |
发表于 2013-7-2 10:20:14
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发表于 2013-7-2 18:24:50