Civil Rights

There is a scene near the end of the wonderful new movie “42” when Jackie Robinson asks Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey a simple question: “Why did you do it?”  He was asking Rickey why he took the courageous step to break the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947.
Rickey’s response has particular resonance for white pro civil rights Democrats of my generation.

Rickey told a story about how, when he was the player coach of a team at a Methodist college in Ohio 40 years earlier, he had a very talented African-American catcher on his team and how he did nothing to help that catcher pursue his dream to play on a high level. He told Robinson he had regretted his inaction for years and vowed to set things right if he ever had a chance.

An opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform doesn’t come along every day. More than 25 years have passed since President Ronald Reagan signed the last major reform into law, and leaders of both parties have tried unsuccessfully to adopt new legislation since. Reforming immigration is hard to do because passing a truly comprehensive bill requires national consensus — bipartisan political will in Congress and the White House paired with an American public that believes reform is important and necessary.
 
Today, the political stars have aligned once more. After a flurry of activity over the past few weeks, comprehensive immigration reform legislation will likely be introduced in both houses of Congress this week. Yet at this once-in-a-generation moment, we shouldn’t attach the label “comprehensive” to a bill that leaves people out simply on the basis of who they are or who they love.

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the most important civil rights cases of our time – Hollingsworth v. Perry (challenging California’s Proposition 8) and United States v. Windsor (contesting the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act). Both Proposition 8 and DOMA define members of the LGBT community as second-class citizens who are incapable of the same commitment as straight couples, and as a class of citizens who pose a direct threat to the American way of life.

On March 26, 2003, a lawyer stood in front of the nine Justices on the Supreme Court and argued that states should not be allowed to criminally prosecute gay and lesbian people for engaging in sexual activity. At the time, 14 states still had laws on the books that made “homosexual conduct” a crime. Flash forward exactly ten years later, and the Court was considering whether Proposition 8, (barring gay couples from marrying in California) violates the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. What a difference a decade makes.

The two of us sat in utter shock and disbelief most recently as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, with a simply bizarre verbal utterance, insulted an entire race of people, particularly those who have given their lives so that all citizens in this country have the right to cast a ballot in fair and unbiased public elections.

The hurtful words flowed from the lips of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments on February 27 in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder in which the court will decide the future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Members of Congress from both parties must have been confounded by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s staggering assertion of judicial activism during last month’s arguments in the Shelby County (Alabama) voting rights case.
 


Speaking to our 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (the VRA), including the preclearance requirement in Section 5, Justice Scalia opined: “This is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress.”
 


With all due respect to the Justice, both the record and the Civil War Amendments to our Constitution conclude otherwise.


Nearly 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder. This case is about whether the federal government can continue to require some states, counties, and cities to request approval or “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department for alterations to their voting laws or congressional maps.

The states, counties, and cities which are required to request “pre-clearance” have been designated as such based on their history of voting discrimination and are covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and includes jurisdictions primarily located in the South, as well as several counties in New York. 

Last weekend, I joined The Faith and Politics Institute on their annual Congressional Civil Rights pilgrimage to Alabama. I’ve taken this trip several times, but its significance this year could not be more poignant. While we have come a long way and much progress has been made, the many battles fought forty eight years ago in Selma are still raging, but this time we’re not fighting in the streets, we’re fighting in the courts.

Last week, some of my colleagues and I took that fight to the steps of the Supreme Court to rally in support of the most effective Civil Rights legislation ever enacted by Congress, The Voting Rights Act.

A few blocks from the U.S. Supreme Court is the National Archives, housing original signed copies of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and landmark pieces of federal legislation – including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In front of the entrance to the Archives stand two statues with inscriptions that read “What is Past is Prologue,” and “Study the Past.” We hope all nine justices of the Supreme Court will heed that wisdom as they hear arguments this week about the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.  

There has been much discussion recently about the welcome prospect of pending immigration reform legislation. This is a propitious moment for our Nation to be having this important debate. Unfortunately, many people are narrowly framing this discussion through the lens of political expediency. The truth is that most conservatives - and most progressives for that matter - actually do want to find a solution to our nation's immigration crisis. Unfortunately, the traditional opponents of immigration reform and immigration in general, are doing their best to mitigate against the coming political winds that favor a bipartisan reform of our immigration laws. These anti-immigration advocates, who are in fact paid lobbyists, are encouraging Republicans to blindly follow them as they continue to bury their heads in the sand, and continue to spout their "anti-immigrant agenda" talking points.