Supreme Court Justices Will Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act, Brought by Former Clarence Thomas Clerk, Gregory S. Coleman

Every black voter in the United States must pay attention to the latest case brought before the United States Supreme Court. The court has agreed to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president. I fully expected that this would pop up again.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures. Funny, wasn’t there evidence of discrimination in the last general election? There were cases across the United States and in predominantly black areas–fewer voting booths, rigid polling hours, less staff and so on.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and “consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence.”

The outcome will be very interesting because the court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., has become increasingly skeptical of race-based remedies. With Uncle Clarence Thomas on the bench, only too happy to get rid of any provisions to protect blacks, I can only imagine what the outcome is going to be.

The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, at a time when literacy tests and other schemes were routinely used, especially in parts of the deep South, to intimidate and exclude black voters. Its Section 5 “pre-clearance” requirements, which compel the Justice Department or a court to sign off on any changes to voting procedures, were intended to last for five years. Instead, the law was expanded to include other minorities, and its duration was extended four times, most recently in 2006 by overwhelming congressional majorities.

The pre-clearance requirements apply to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — as well as counties and towns in seven others. Fifteen jurisdictions in Virginia, including the city of Fairfax, have been allowed to “bail out” of the requirement with the agreement of the federal government.

Challengers say the Section 5 designations are an outrageous “badge of shame” on jurisdictions that have never discriminated, at a time when minorities have been elected to public office in record numbers.

“The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965,” wrote Gregory S. Coleman, a former Texas solicitor general who brought the suit on behalf of a tiny utilities district in Austin that is covered by the law.

The district was created in the late 1980s to provide sewer services to a new subdivision, and there has never been a charge of discrimination in the way the now-3,500 residents elect their five-member board of directors. But any changes the district makes — such as moving its elections from a resident’s home to a local school — require Justice Department approval.

Coleman, a politically active lawyer who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, testified to Congress in opposition to extending the Voting Rights Act in 2006. He recruited Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 for a test case after Congress extended the law for another 25 years. Source: Washington Post

Why am I not surprised that someone associated with Clarence Thomas brought this suit? Clarence Thomas acts as though racism was never a problem of untold proportions in the United States. He acts as though he coasted through college because of his educational merits, rather than with the assistance of Affirmative Action. Clarence Thomas and Gregory S. Coleman are real Uncle Toms in every sense of the word. So, because Barack Obama will become the first African American president of the USA, that means we should discard all protections in place for blacks in America, in terms of suffrage rights? There has been more display of racism towards Barack Obama from the moment he declared his intentions to run for the presidency. He was the first to receive Secret Service protection. So the notion that the playing field has been leveled is furthest from the truth and actually insulting on so many level.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas, Discrimination, Gregory S. Coleman, of 1965, US Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

Black Residents In Coal Run Neighborhood in Ohio’s Muskingum County Awarded $11 Million in Discrimination Suit

For all those people who seem to think that their is no racism in America, take note of this recent jury award. According to media reports, residents of a mostly black neighborhood in rural Ohio were awarded nearly $11 million by a federal jury that found local authorities denied them public water service for decades out of racial discrimination.

Each of the 67 plaintiffs was awarded $15,000 to $300,000, depending on how long they had lived in the Coal Run neighborhood, about 5 miles east of Zanesville in Muskingum County in east-central Ohio. The money covers both monetary losses and the residents’ pain and suffering between 1956, when water lines were first laid in the area, and 2003, when Coal Run got public water.

The lawsuit was filed in 2003 after the Ohio Civil Rights Commission concluded the residents were victims of discrimination. The city, county and East Muskingum Water Authority all denied it and noted that many residents in the lightly populated county don’t have public water. Coal Run residents either paid to have wells dug, hauled water for cisterns or collected rain water so they could drink, cook and bathe.

The jury in U.S. District Court found that failing to provide water service to the residents violated state and federal civil rights laws. The lawsuit was not a class-action. Colfax said 25 to 30 families live in Coal Run now. The water authority must pay 55 percent of the damages, while the county owes 25 percent and the city owes 20 percent, plaintiffs’ attorney Reed Colfax said. The water authority no longer exists, and the county would be responsible for paying that share of the judgment.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys successfully argued that the decision not to pipe water to the plaintiffs was racially motivated, painting a picture of a community with a history of segregation. Black residents of Coal Run Road were denied water over the years while nearby white neighbors were provided it, they said.

Zanesville has about 25,000 residents on the edge of the state’s Appalachian region. One in every five families is below the federal poverty level, and the unemployment rate in Muskingum County in May was 7.4 percent. The national unemployment rate that month was 5.5 percent.

I remember Zanesville very clearly. I went to Ohio University for my undergraduate studies and one of my best friends lived in Zanesville during that time. I recall that the city was very segregated with blacks living on one side and whites on the other side. My friend’s father owned his own business and purchased a house in a predominantly white neighborhood. They were greeted by crosses being burnt in their yard, though it never deterred the family and they stood steadfast.

Filed under: Coal Run Village, Discrimination, Zanesville

Four Black Employees Sue Krystal Franchise Over Strip Search

Four black former employees of Krystal restaurant have filed a lawsuit against the holding company of the restaurant alleging that they were unfairly strip searched by white managers and that three of them were fired after they complained. This is the sad reality that we face in the United States today.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit on their behalf and is seeking back wages, plus interest. The fired employees were subjected to this racist behavior after $100 disappeared from a white employee’s cash register at a Krystal restaurant in Winder, Georgia in June 2005. Herbert Hunter, Daphne Hill and Shannon Jackson said they were terminated after they complained that only black employees were strip searched. The fourth employee, Quinthony Brown did not return to work after he was searched.

Media reports have said that the employees complained to the EEOC two months after the alleged incident, and the agency has been working to negotiate a settlement with New Capital Dimensions, the Milledgeville-based company that formerly owned the Winder franchise of the Krystal chain that operates across the South.

While this happened in 2005, it is proof that we are still confronted with these iniquities and inequality on a daily basis. Why did the managers have to turn to the black employees first? That is so unfair, but it is the reality we live with as blacks everyday.

Filed under: African Americans, Discrimination, EEOC, Krystal, Strip Search