ANNAPOLIS — Maryland lawmakers and activists said they are concerned about a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted the federal Voting Rights Act, but said a new state law will better protect the rights of voters.
“Fortunately for Marylanders, the General Assembly acted just in time, with just enough urgency to ensure that there is at least now a constitutional, state-level remedy that will continue to allow Marylanders to challenge racist voting methods,” Del. Vaughn Stewart, D-Montgomery, said.
In Louisiana v. Callais, the court ruled Wednesday that a majority-minority district drawn in Louisiana was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The district was created to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or [language],” by providing Black Louisianans a second majority district. According to the decision, states cannot use race as the predominant factor in creating a congressional district.
Despite the ruling, Stewart said Section 2 was not fully destroyed.
“What they did was less bold, but in some ways even more insidious,” he said. “They basically left Section 2 on the books while making it functionally unenforceable.”
Advocates said the ruling means that states can now enact discriminatory or gerrymandered voting maps, diminishing minority voters’ power nationwide.
“People don’t understand the enormity of this,” said Karsonya Wise Whitehead, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and professor of African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. “We can show up to vote, but when you dilute our vote, there’s no power in the vote. It just becomes an exercise in futility.”
Maryland’s efforts come as civil rights activists said the voting rights of minority groups are under attack by the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress.
“The way the administration is moving and so forth, I would say that we are considering any route that they can take somehow to kind of come in and intervene,” said Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland.
Maryland adopts voter protections
Democratic lawmakers and activists said Maryland is better positioned to protect minority voters following the last-minute passage of a voting rights act in the state legislature.
“Nothing in the SCOTUS decision directly addresses the power of states to prevent discrimination,” Antoine said.
Following contentious debates, Maryland lawmakers approved a voting rights bill earlier this month prohibiting counties and municipalities from using an electoral method diluting or otherwise impairing the votes of “members of a protected class.”
“We anticipated this day. That’s why Maryland passed our own Voting Rights Act in the final moments of session — to ensure that every voter has a fair chance to be heard, represented, and counted,” Maryland House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel, said in a statement Wednesday. “We believe that today’s ruling does not limit our ability to protect discrimination in Maryland elections. In fact, it underscores that states must lead because federal protections are no longer enough.”
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed the bill into law Tuesday, less than 24 hours before the Supreme Court’s decision. The emergency bill took effect immediately.
“It’s a law that is very much constitutional and is very much necessary now,” Stewart said. “Callais gutted the federal remedy, but it did not gut ours because ours is a separate law in state court with state standards. That’s exactly why we did it this way.”
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Charles Sydnor III, D-Baltimore County, said Maryland’s voting rights bill should stand despite the court’s ruling because it addresses local elections, not the drawing of statewide congressional district maps.
Some Republican lawmakers, however, said they supported the court’s decision.
“Redistricting should never be based on race. The Supreme Court got this right. Marylanders deserve a process that is fair, transparent, and grounded in equal treatment under the law,” Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., said in a statement emailed to Capital News Service.
‘We need to get in this fight’
While Maryland advocates said the state has taken steps to protect voters’ rights, national activists said they are worried other legislatures won’t take similar steps and call the court decision a devastating blow.
“Politicians should not choose their voters, voters should choose their politicians,” Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the Legal Defense Fund, said at a virtual press conference Thursday.
Advocates also fear the ruling could have political ramifications, including GOP-controlled legislatures redrawing maps in their favor.
“The court is privileging the ability of white, hyper-majority Republican legislatures to maintain power through racial gerrymandering,” Alanah Odoms, executive director of Louisiana’s American Civil Liberties Union, said at the press conference.
Some states are already moving to implement new voting maps that remove majority-minority districts. Florida passed a new congressional map hours after the court’s decision.
Still, some voting rights advocates said they are determined to continue their efforts.
“We need to get in this fight because now, we are fighting for more than just small victories,” Wise Whitehead said. “We’re talking about the heart and soul of this nation, and we’re talking about rights that our ancestors actually marched, died, bled, got arrested and fought for.”
Courtland Cox, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said he wants people to organize and act, not simply say “we died for this on the cross.”
SNCC and other civil rights organizations led efforts to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Many veterans were beaten and even killed during the Civil Rights Movement.
“If we didn’t expect the segregationists to do something in the South, then we shouldn’t expect the Supreme Court to do something now,” said Cox. “I’m not interested in saying, ‘Choir, woe is me.’ I’m really not. I’m not interested in celebrating the problem. I’m interested in saying, ‘They made their actions, what are we going to do?’”
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