With Voting Rights Act Gutted, Florida Set To Resume Voter Purge

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Florida’s controversial initiative to screen for suspected non-citizens and purge them from the voter rolls is allowed to officially resume, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A Hispanic civil rights group and two naturalized citizens sued last year to block the purge, arguing that it needed to be approved by the federal government because five Florida counties were covered under the Voting Rights Act. After the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a key section of the law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had little choice but to dismiss the suit. Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) said he plans to resume the voter purge.

In 2012, the Department of Justice warned that Florida’s voter purge, which targeted roughly 180,000 people, was illegal, and all of the state’s county election supervisors refused to execute the purge. The lists of flagged individuals — many of whom had Latino-sounding names — also turned out to be largely inaccurate. These flagged individuals would receive notifications in the mail notifying them that they had 30 days to contest the purge.

The state had to partially settle with a civil rights group and restore suspected non-citizens to the rolls, but soon tried to re-start the purge just a month before the November presidential election with a drastically pared down list of 198 voters.

After all the legal battles and thousands of wasted taxpayer dollars, the state could not turn upvirtually any non-citizens who were registered to vote.

Florida voters, particularly in minority-heavy urban areas, suffered some of the longest lines and most chaotic elections in the country last year. The mayhem was largely created by Republican lawmakers’ efforts to suppress votes. Besides trying to purge voters, Republicans cut the number of early voting days in half, changed ballot length restrictions so they could add frivolous constitutional amendments to 12-page ballots, and restricted voter registration. These voter suppression efforts discouraged at least 201,000 Floridians from voting, and black and Latino voters waited nearly twice as long as white voters. The backlash was so fierce that even Gov. Rick Scott (R), the primary defender of these voter suppression laws, agreed to sign an election reform law undoing most of the damage.

Prominent Florida Republicans admitted shortly after the election that the motive behind all these election law changes was to make it harder for Democrats to vote.

Bush-Appointed Judge Slams Decision Striking Voting Rights Act — Court’s Reasoning Was ‘Made Up’

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

If a leading conservative scholar and former judge were now on the Supreme Court instead of Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito, it is likely that the Voting Right Act would remain intact.

Judge Michael McConnell was a leading conservative law professor at the time President George W. Bush named him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2002 (he’s since left the bench to return to the legal academy at Stanford Law School). McConnell was also widely viewed as a possible Supreme Court nominee during the Bush Administration.

In an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg, McConnell has harsh words for the five conservative justices’ recent decision neutering much of the Voting Rights Act — labeling the reasoning that drove that decision “made up.”

Although the conservatives’ decision in Shelby County v. Holder never actually identifies the legal standard of review that led them to strike down the heart of America’s voting rights law, the opinion rests in large part on the fact that the Voting Rights Act applies some of its requirements “only to some States,” in what the Court labels as a “dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty.”

As McConnell explains, however, “[t]here’s no requirement in the Constitution to treat all states the same,” adding that “[i]t might be an attractive principle, but it doesn’t seem to be in the Constitution.”

Judge McConnell is, of course, correct. The Fifteenth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and it gives Congress “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” One searches the Constitution in vain for language forbidding the Voting Rights Act application of some of its strongest medicine to jurisdictions judged to have the worst record of voter suppression.

Yet, while the legal assault on voting rights cannot be justified under the Constitution’s text, it has been quite a windfall for conservatives. At least six states are already moving forward with new voter suppression laws now that a key prong of the Voting Rights Act is no longer available to stop them. Texas announced that it would begin suppressing votes just two hours after the Supreme Court handed down its decision.

North Carolina Prepares To Suppress Black Voters, Now That The Voting Rights Act Lost Its Teeth

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina is moving forward with a host of bills to roll back voting rights. Republican lawmakers are accelerating a new agenda to eliminate early voting, Sunday voting hours, and same-day registration provisions. GOP leaders also vowed to move quickly to pass a controversial voter ID law that would make it much harder for minorities, seniors, students, and low-income voters to cast their ballots.

The court’s conservative majority decreed last Tuesday that the formula used to identify states with a history of using election law to discriminate against minorities has “no logical relationship to the present day.” Many of the covered jurisdictions celebrated the decision by promptlyadvancing voting restrictions that disproportionately target minorities and low-income voters. Texas enacted their previously blocked voter ID law mere hours after the ruling.

North Carolina’s newly unfettered attack on voting rights has three main prongs:

• Require ID at the polls. North Carolina’s voter ID bill could pose problems for 1 in 10 voters, according to an analysis by the State Board of Elections. About 613,000 North Carolinians lack the required government-issued ID. Nearly a third of these voters are black, while over half are registered Democrats.
• Penalize college students for voting. Republicans are also pushing a bill to raise taxes on families with college students who choose to vote at school rather than at home, effectively discouraging college students from voting.
• End early voting and same-day registration. Other states that restricted early voting, like Ohio and Florida, needlessly created mammoth lines on Election Day, forcing some voters to wait until 1 a.m. to cast a ballot. The backlash in Florida has been especially strong, prompting Gov. Rick Scott (R) to reverse his own voter suppression laws. In North Carolina, black voters make up 29 percent of early voters and 34 percent of voters who took advantage of same-day voter registration at the polls.

The Republican-dominated legislature and new Republican governor will likely do all they can to speed along these restrictions. However, polls show that North Carolinians overwhelmingly oppose these new voter suppression measures. “Moral Monday” protests are cropping up all over the state to challenge these bills and a slew of other draconian policies targeting the poor, women, minorities, and seniors.

Fox News Ignores Favored Judiciary Committee Congressman Now That He Supports Fixing VRA

SERGIO MUNOZ/Media Matters For America

Conservative Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, was a frequent legal authority for Fox News until he announced that he was part of a bipartisan effort to reauthorize the key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that the Supreme Court recently struck down.

In the past two months, Fox News has repeatedly turned to the legal expertise of Sensenbrenner, former Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, on issues ranging from the investigation of national security leaks by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) under the Patriot Act.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, in particular, has expressed his admiration for Sensenbrenner's stature, hosting him on the June 17 edition of his show and informing the long-time congressman that "you're one of the guys that has always been on principle, which I admire and I know you have been there a while, fighting the good fight every day."

Indeed, Hannity appears to have specifically invited Sensenbrenner onto his show that day so the congressman could defend him from Media Matters' observation that the Fox News host was wildly hypocritical in his criticism of the NSA's current surveillance practices. Hannity subsequently praised Sensenbrenner's defense of the Fox News host and his legal explanation of the Patriot Act - legislation the congressman ushered through the House as Judiciary Committee chair - as "enlightening, edifying."

Sensenbrenner is also well-known for leading the effort to pass another overwhelmingly supported bipartisan bill signed into law by Bush: the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA, which the Supreme Court just infamously gutted in Shelby County v. Holder.

Because Congress accumulated extensive evidence to update and justify the VRA's selection of jurisdictions whose election changes remain subject to federal review due to their inability to stop suppressing the vote on the basis of race, Sensenbrenner has repeatedly defended Congress' reauthorization work. Sensenbrenner even filed an amicus brief for the Supreme Court in strong support of the VRA against the right-wing challenge in Shelby County, which the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court ignored.

Now, although Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), current chair of the Judiciary Committee and another Republican who voted to reauthorize the VRA in 2006, is conspicuously silent, Sensenbrenner is helping lead the bipartisan effort to once again pass the VRA provision that was struck down in Shelby County. As reported byThe Hill:

A House Republican who led the last push to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act exhorted lawmakers Wednesday to join him in bringing the law back to life.

The day after the Supreme Court quashed the anti-discrimination statute, Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) urged lawmakers to cast aside their differences and restore the rejected provisions for the sake of voter protection.

"The Voting Rights Act is vital to America's commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process," Sensenbrenner, the second-ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in a statement.

"This is going to take time, and will require members from both sides of the aisle to put partisan politics aside and ensure Americans' most sacred right is protected."

But a Media Matters search of transcripts provided by Snapstream and Nexis reveals that not only has Sensenbrenner been missing from Fox News since the Supreme Court handed down its decision on June 25, his new VRA efforts have not been discussed.

Instead, Fox News host Megyn Kelly interviewed National Review Online contributing editor Andrew McCarthy, who attacked progressives as demagogues and "race hucksters," pushing the false claim that systematic voter suppression on the basis of race "has long ago passed to the dustbin of history." Hannity chose right-wing pundit Erik Rush for his show's segment on Shelby County, a guest who proceeded to defend the opinion on the grounds that the VRA's defense against racial discrimination is useless because "we've got far, far more of a problem with dead voters and entire blocks of voters getting abducted by aliens[.]"

Sensenbrenner, on the other hand, a guest Hannity has declared he holds in such high esteem, remains absent on Fox News. In fact, the congressman has only been mentioned once on Fox News this week, in a June 28 segment of America's Newsroom that returned to the pre-Shelby discussion of national security leaks.

Meanwhile, Sensenbrenner's thoughts on Shelby County and his attempt "to put partisan politics aside and ensure Americans' most sacred right is protected" remains unreported on Fox.

The Roberts Court casts aside judicial restraint on Voting Rights Act case

By The Washington Post Editorial Board:

LED BY Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court on Tuesday gutted a key element of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most potent anti-discrimination tools Congress ever devised. It was an audacious ruling devoid of the restraint the chief justice and his colleagues in the majority should have shown.

Among other things, the act obliges certain states and localities to “pre-clear” any change in electoral policy or procedure with either the Justice Department or a federal court. In its 5 to 4 decision, the court didn’t squash the notion that such a powerful measure could be acceptable. Instead, the majority held that the formula Congress used to determine which jurisdictions to subject to pre-clearance — mostly in the South, with its grotesque history of racial discrimination — was an artifact from the 1960s with “no logical relation to the present day.”

Yet, Congress concluded in 2006, the last time that it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, that the formula was still very relevant. And, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in a spirited dissent, federal lawmakers have wide latitude under the 14th and 15th amendments to preserve meaningful access to the vote, particularly against policy or procedural manipulations that limit the franchise of racial minorities. That’s why a previous high-court holding found that those lawmakers could use “any rational means” to combat racial discrimination at the ballot box — a permissive standard.

Congress spent months in 2006 amassing a massive record to show that, even though the first generation of discriminatory voting measures had been eradicated, subtler but significant forms of discrimination in jurisdictions subject to pre-clearance remained “serious and pervasive.” Lawmakers also considered evidence that discrimination still occurs disproportionately in those places. Because people and places change, Congress allowed jurisdictions with 10 years of good behavior to “bail out” of pre-clearance. It also allowed courts to “bail in” jurisdictions if need be. Both were essential elements of the system, allowing it to adapt to changing realities. That was the basis upon which a 390 to 33 majority in a Republican-controlled House and a 98 to 0 majority in a Republican Senate determined that pre-clearance requirements remained rational policy that deserved extension until 2031.

The question in Tuesday’s case, Justice Ginsburg wrote, was who gets to make the judgment about that extension — “this court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to enforce the post-Civil War amendments ‘by appropriate legislation.’ ” Instead of taking a more modest course, perhaps by enhancing the opportunity for jurisdictions to bail out, Justice Roberts and the jurists who joined him instead substituted their reading of the substantial evidence available for that of Congress. That’s not just calling balls and strikes — that’s pushing the batter aside and stepping into his place.

According to the ruling, lawmakers still have room to devise a new formula for determining which states and localities should have to pre-clear their election rules. Lawmakers should proceed, while taking care — both because pre-clearance is as formidable a tool as it is effective and because a skeptical chief justice will be watching.

Right-Wing Media Cover Up Supreme Court's Unprecedented Blow To Voting Rights

SERGIO MUNOZ/Media Matters For America

Right-wing media marked the Supreme Court's devastating Shelby County v. Holder decision by ignoring, trivializing, and downright misrepresenting its dire consequences for one of the most effective civil rights laws of all time, as well as for millions of American voters.

Tossing aside history, legal precedent, and congressional intent, the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 in Shelby County, a sharply split 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. In a twisted reading of this crown jewel of civil rights law, the conservative majority invalidated the provision within the VRA that prevents states and local jurisdictions from enacting racially discriminatory election practices, reasoning that this vital protection against voter suppression is instead an impermissible restriction on the highly dubious "equal sovereignty" of southern states.

Rather than acknowledge the documented voter suppression that the VRA has effectively and consistently kept at bay from the voting rights struggles of the civil rights era through the 2012 elections, right-wing media are echoing the Supreme Court's blow to the VRA, misrepresenting Shelby County as something other than an attack on the American right to vote.

Fox News host Jon Scott, in a Happening Now segment leading off Fox's coverage of the decision, chose to trivialize and confuse the radical decision as "the president took another shot you might say, a bit of a smackdown" by the Supreme Court. The consequences stretch much further than that.

Contrary to this horserace description, the VRA has never been a political manifestation of the executive. The VRA is rather Congress' chosen bipartisan method to effectuate the right to vote in the Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, repeatedly updated and reauthorized because of incessant and ongoing voter suppression, and upheld as constitutional four separate times by the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, later in the day, Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano continued in the vein of his colleague by astonishingly asserting "nobody is seriously claiming today...that there is systematic efforts on the part of the government in the south to keep people of color from voting."

Instead, right-wing media figures like Rush Limbaugh chose to tout the decision as a victory against people who allegedly discriminate against whites, such as the "civil rights community" that wants "perpetual discrimination."

National Review Online turned to "voter fraud" mythmaker John Fund who made the stunning claim that Shelby County was "actually a victory for civil rights" that only "overturn[ed] a small part" of the VRA. From the NRO:

The Supreme Court's decision today to overturn a small part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is actually a victory for civil rights. As the court noted, what made sense both in moral and practical terms almost a half century ago has to be approached anew.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act forced states that had poor minority registration or turnout numbers in the 1960s to remain in a permanent penalty box from which they were forced to seek Justice Department approval for the most basic of election-law decisions. Its consideration of state requests for election changes was often arbitrary and partisan, as witnessed by the recent smackdown that the DOJ got from a federal court when it tried to block South Carolina's voter ID law.

The rest of the Voting Rights Act remains in place and will be used to ensure minority voting rights.

Fund's description of both the decision and the law is not only inaccurate, it's ridiculous.

The Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the bloody attack on voting rights supporters in Selma, Alabama. Because of the repeated and incorrigible voting suppression by states in the south, the Voting Rights Act has a provision - Section 5 - that requires states with a demonstrated history of infringing on voting rights to "preclear" any election changes with the Department of Justice. Although the covered states were originally those that practiced Jim Crow, another provision - Section 4 - contained a flexible formula that allowed these states to "bail out" if they stopped illegally discriminating and could "bail in" new states that suppressed the vote.

Working in tandem, these sections have been extremely effective at preventing voting changes that have an unconstitutional effect of voters of color. They have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court and have been consistently updated and reauthorized by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress, most recently in 2006, because of continued and entrenched voter suppression. In fact, not only has the Department of Justice not suffered "smackdown[s]" in its application of its preclearance powers, as falsely claimed by Fund, it has successfully prevented more than700 illegal attempts at voter suppression since 1982 and its ability to stop similar racial discrimination during the 2012 election cycle was upheld by both conservative and liberal justices.

The right-wing narrative of an inconsequential decision is therefore completely upside down. Sections 4 and 5 are no more a "small part" of the VRA than the equal protection clause is a "small part" of the Fourteenth Amendment. As even Napolitano admitted on Fox Business' Varney & Co., the conservatives in Shelby Countyhave struck down the very "core" of the VRA by invalidating Section 4.

Sadly, the damaging results of Shelby County to fair elections and the American right to vote will be predictable, especially given right-wing media's insistence on pushing the Republican Party's unending efforts at enacting voter ID laws. These laws, rather than "fix" a problem of in-person voter fraud that is "virtually non-existent," instead have been recognized - both intentionally and unintentionally - as blatant forms of voter suppression. After the decision was announced, Texas lost no time in announcing that its racially discriminatory voter ID law, previously blocked by Section 5, is now a requirement.

Thanks to Shelby County, the floodgates for these racially discriminatory laws will now be open and the right to vote for millions of Americans will be at risk in a way that hasn't been seen since Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)and the many other heroes of the civil rights era awoke the conscience of the country to this "deadly wrong," half a century ago. ABC News interviewed a "shocked, dismayed, disappointed" Lewis shortly after Shelby County was announced. From the interview:

"What the Supreme Court did was to put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965," Lewis told ABC News. "This act helped liberate not just a people but a nation."

Lewis, 73, who is among the last living leaders of the civil rights movement, called the decision "a very sad moment" for the nation. He stood in his congressional office, surrounded by black-and-white photographs from a bygone era and watched with ABC News as the Supreme Court released its ruling.

"I'm in disbelief that members of the Supreme Court would take this position," Lewis said.

[...]

"President Barack Obama wouldn't be the president of the United States if it hadn't been for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so we have made progress," Lewis said, but he feared that a weakened Voting Rights Act would allow local election officials "to go back to another period.

"We don't want to go back. I'm shocked, dismayed, disappointed. I take it very personally," Lewis said. "I gave a little blood on that bridge for the right to vote, for the right to participate in a Democratic process."

With victories like these, the GOP will become the Whigs (Who? Exactly.)

by Liberal Librarian/The People's View

What does the Supreme Court's decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act mean for the Republican Party? Follow me, if you will. 

Earlier, Spandan wrote an analysis of the decision and how the Democrats should respond to it. Basically, it's an opportunity to do in 2014 what we did in 2012 in the face of voter suppression.

But it's a bit more than that. Much more. To emphasize Spandan's point about demography being destiny: both he and I live in California. Up until Prop 187, the state was more or less reliably Republican, at least in presidential elections. Things were more complex lower down, but the GOP had a lock on our electoral votes. Prop 187 was the galvanizing force which turned a reddish state into pure cerulean blue. How much so? For the first time, Democrats control a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature. And all statewide elected officials are Democrats. The two-thirds majority is big, because that's what you need to pass a budget. No more deals need to be made with the GOP. The governor, Jerry Brown, is from the fiscally conservative wing of the party; but he still supports making needed investments in both physical and human infrastructure, while living within the state's means. And for the first time since the 1990s, the state posted a budget surplus. That's what happens when Democrats run government.

Republicans look at what once was a bulwark and are scared out of their minds that the rest of the country is going that way.California had always been touted as the Shangri-La to which white Midwesterners could retire. In my own city of Los Angeles, we had race-baiting mayor Sam Yorty serving as recently as the late 1960's / early 1970's. Now we've had exactly one Republican mayor in the past 40 years, and he won by being the most moderate of Republicans, and making deals with the Democratic majority on the City Council. Within a generation, with massive foreign immigration, Los Angeles went from being "Indiana on the Pacific" to a true world city, as cosmopolitan and diverse as New York or London.

The Republican brand in California is at an all time low. And, keep in mind, this was down without gerrymandering. California has an independent commission, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, drawing district lines both on the federal and state levels. So, no gerrymandering means that it will be a wash electorally, right? No. This commission drew the lines which gave Democrats a two-thirds majority in the Legislature, and increased the Democratic representation in the Congressional delegation. Unless Democrats muck it up, Republicans have no future in California. And as goes California, so goes the nation. Our state is the precursor of what the rest of the country will look like. Even Old Confederacy states like Georgia will have a large segment of minority voters, who will likely give their votes to Democrats, and joining with liberal whites will tip the balance of power across the south.


Look at what's happening in TX. Here it was Prop 187; there it will be the attack on women's health and voter ID laws. The mobilization over the abortion bill being filibustered by Democrats, led by Wendy Davis, is something TX hasn't seen in decades. The more white Republicans grasp to preserve their remaining power, the more they will lose. Demography already puts the White House out of their grasp, for the most part. And as in 2012, attempts to suppress the vote for 2014 will propel the Democratic electorate to stand in line for hours and obtain any ID required, especially with OFA as a ready-made organization.

Which brings me to my last point. To all the naysayers who are now wailing that "we will never win another election", I have a few questions: Where have you been for the past 12 years? More specifically, where were you in 2000, when Nader's 3% of the vote was enough to throw Florida into chaos and hand the Presidency to George W. Bush? There is a direct line from November of 2000 to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. To pretend otherwise is to ignore history. And where were you in 2010, when the 2008 voters stayed home and handed both the House and state governments across the nation to a radical Republican fringe? There is also a direct line from November 2010 to the SCOTUS ruling. To pretend otherwise is to lie to yourself. And where will you be in 2014? Will you donate to Democratic organizations? Will you drive voters to the polls? Will you make calls? Or will you sit at your computers gnashing your teeth and despairing because the mean nasty Republicans are mean and nasty?

A democracy is only as good as we make it. Without participation, the loudest voices will win. We have to be the loudest voices, voices that make the earth shake. Anything less, and we deserve what we get.

The GOP knows it's heading for history's dustbin. It's time for us to sweep them into it.

Arizona governor: Racial discrimination doesn’t ‘take place any longer’

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Tuesday said the Voting Rights Act had “hampered” the state and was pleased to see a key provision of the civil rights law struck down.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court is required to preclear laws affecting voters in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which determined which states must receive preclearance.

When asked why Arizona shouldn’t be required to have its voting laws precleared, Brewer said racial discrimination was no longer a problem in the state.

“I think we were being punished by the Voting Rights Act for indiscretions, bad things that took place decades ago, and those don’t take place any longer,” she told reporters. “We have grown and so it was the right thing to do so I’m pleased.”

The Republican governor said the people of Arizona should “trust” that lawmakers wouldn’t write up racially discriminatory voting laws.

The Department of Justice has filed formal objections to racially discriminatory changes to Arizona law 22 times since 1973.

Watch video, courtesy of AzCentral, below:

[H/T: TPM]

Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Tears Into Supreme Court For Gutting Voting Rights

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) urged Congress to enact legislation that would protect the freedom to vote on Tuesday, just hours after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement.

In a 5 to 4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court ruled that Section 4, which establishes the formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to federal “preclearance” of changes in election laws, is unconstitutional. Congress will now have to decide which areas of the country still deserve additional federal scrutiny.

“These men that voted to strip the Voting Rights Act of its power, they never stood in unmovable lines,” Lewis told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “They never had to pass a so-called literacy test. It took us almost 100 years to get where we are today. So will it take another 100 years to fix it, to change it?” he asked. Watch it:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Congress voted to renew the Voting Rights Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006, each time with increasingly larger margins. Twenty Republican senators who are still serving in Congress supported re-authorization in 2006 and only 33 members in the House voted against it.

“It is going to be very difficult,” to pass legislation in this Congress, Lewis admitted, “but people said the same thing in 1965.” “I think what happened today with the Supreme Court will motivate hundreds and thousands of people, African American, latino, white, Asian American, Native Americans, men, women, students, to come out. The vote is precious.”

Indeed, in a press conference following the decision, Attorney General Eric Holder noted that federal courts relied on Section 4 of the Act to invalidate discriminatory voter laws in Texas and South Carolina as recently as last year and called on Congress to ensure that everyone’s vote is protected. Since 2010, at least eight of eleven states in the former Confederacy passed voting restrictions and just today, Texas Attorney General announced that the state will move “forward with a controversial voter ID law” in the wake of the ruling.

Progressive groups have kicked off a petition to amend the constitution to “protect our freedom to vote,” building on legislation proposed by Democrats in the House. The measure will have to be approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, argued that any Congressional action is unlikely, “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.” “It is confounding that after decades of progress on voting rights, which have become part of the American fabric, the Supreme Court would tear it asunder,” he said.

“I didn’t think that on that day when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, that I would live to see five members of the United States Supreme Court undoing what President Johnson did with those pens,” Lewis added. “We must not forget our past. We must not forget our history. If we forget it, we will repeat it.”

UPDATE

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told TPM that Congress should act to preserving voting rights: “My experience with John Lewis in Selma earlier this year was a profound experience that demonstrated the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all,” Cantor said in a statement provided to TPM. “I’m hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected.”

Two Hours After The Supreme Court Gutted The Voting Rights Act, Texas AG Suppresses Minority Voters

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Just two hours after the Supreme Court reasoned that discrimination is not rampant enough in Southern states towarrant restrictions under the Voting Rights Act, Texas is already advancing a voter ID law and a redistricting map blocked last year for discriminating against black and Latino residents. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a statement declaring that both measures may go into effect immediately, now that there is no law stopping them from discriminating against minorities.

In 2012, the Justice Department blocked these measures under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Federal courts agreed that both the strict voter ID law and the redistricting map would disproportionately target the state’s fast-growing minority communities. Still, Texas filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court over the Voting Rights Act case complaining that the DOJ had used “abusive and heavy-handed tactics” to thwart the state’s attempts at voter suppression.

In the case of the new electoral map, a panel of federal judges found that “substantial surgery”was done to predominantly black districts, cutting off representatives’ offices from their strongest fundraising bases. Meanwhile, white Congress members’ districts were either preserved or “redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent’s grandchildren.” The new map was also drawn in secret by white Republican representatives, without notifying their black and Latino peers. After the court blocked the map, the legislature approved small changes to appease Democratic lawmakers last week. Now that they are free to use the old maps, however, Gov. Rick Perry (R) could simply veto the new plan and use the more discriminatory maps.

The strict photo ID requirement blocked by the DOJ and a federal court would require Texans to show one of a very narrow list of acceptable photo IDs. Expired gun licenses from other states are considered valid, but Social Security cards and student IDs are not. If voters do not have an ID — as many minorities, seniors, and poor people do not — they must travel at their own expense, produce their birth certificate, and in many cases pay a fee to get an ID.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the DOJ no longer has any power to block these laws, even with the backing of federal judges who found blatant discrimination. Under the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, individuals may sue to kill these measures, but only after they have gone into effect and disenfranchised countless Texans of color.

According to the 2010 Census, non-Hispanic whites have become a minority in Texas, down from 52.4 percent to 45.3 percent of the population. Latinos have accounted for 65 percent of the state’s population growth over the past decade. Projections show that the eligible voter pool will shift to roughly 44 percent white voters and 37 percent Hispanic voters by 2025. Faced with this demographic reality, conservatives have alternated between changing their messaging to appeal to Latino voters, who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012, and making it harder for them to vote.

It is only a matter of time before other states with voter ID laws and other election law changes blocked by the DOJ last year follow Texas’ example. Besides Texas, the attorney generals of Alabama, Arizona, South Dakota, and South Carolina argued that the Voting Rights Act was getting in the way of their ability to enact discriminatory laws.

UPDATE

North Carolina and Mississippi also plan to pass strict voter ID laws