Texas 2015 - 84th Regular

Texas Senate Bill SCR29 Compare Versions

Only one version of the bill is available at this time.

Old	New	Differences
1	1	84R10618 BPG-D
2	2	By: Rodríguez, et al. S.C.R. No. 29
3	3
4	4
5	5	CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
6	6	WHEREAS, Widely recognized as the most effective civil rights
7	7	legislation ever enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was used for
8	8	nearly a half-century to ensure equal access to the ballot box, but
9	9	the 2013 United States Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v.
10	10	Holder eviscerated its core protections; and
11	11	WHEREAS, The heart of the VRA is Section 5, the preclearance
12	12	provision for jurisdictions with a history and ongoing pattern of
13	13	discrimination against racial and language minorities; until the
14	14	Shelby decision, Section 5 required nine states and portions of six
15	15	others to get preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice or
16	16	the federal court in the District of Columbia before they could
17	17	implement any voting changes; the coverage formula to determine
18	18	which jurisdictions fell under this requirement is contained in
19	19	Section 4(b) of the act, and in Shelby, the court ruled this formula
20	20	unconstitutional, rendering Section 5 virtually useless; and
21	21	WHEREAS, Chief Justice John Roberts readily acknowledged in
22	22	Shelby that voting discrimination still exists; nevertheless, the
23	23	court invalidated the coverage formula on the basis that it had not
24	24	been updated and no longer reflected current conditions of
25	25	discrimination; the court left it to Congress to develop, if it so
26	26	chose, a new coverage formula and other mechanisms to restore to
27	27	citizens the protections granted under Section 5, namely the
28	28	ability to stop discriminatory voting changes before their
29	29	implementation and the requirement to notify citizens of voting
30	30	changes that could disenfranchise them; and
31	31	WHEREAS, In 1982, when President Ronald Reagan signed the
32	32	reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, he described the right to
33	33	vote as "the crown jewel of American liberties"; Congress has
34	34	passed every reauthorization and extension of the act with
35	35	overwhelmingly bipartisan support, and in 2006, its analysis found
36	36	overwhelming evidence of continuing discrimination, including more
37	37	than 750 Section 5 objections by the Department of Justice that had
38	38	resulted in the blocking of some 2,400 attempts at discriminatory
39	39	voting changes; as a result, Congress concluded that the coverage
40	40	formula enforced by Section 5 was necessary for at least another 25
41	41	years; and
42	42	WHEREAS, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cautioned in her dissent
43	43	to the Shelby ruling that overturning Section 4(b) was tantamount
44	44	to "throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not
45	45	getting wet"; her warning has been borne out, as at least 10 of the
46	46	15 states previously covered in whole or in part by Section 5 have
47	47	considered new restrictive legislation that would make it harder
48	48	for minorities to cast a ballot; and
49	49	WHEREAS, Texas has a long and continuing history of attempts
50	50	to exclude Latino, African American, and other underrepresented
51	51	groups from full participation in politics and governance; between
52	52	1982 and 2005, the state earned 107 Section 5 objections to voting
53	53	policies, among them nearly 100 concerning local laws, which
54	54	affected counties that are home to over 70 percent of the state's
55	55	nonwhite voting-age population; in the year and a half preceding
56	56	the Shelby decision, the Justice Department found that the state's
57	57	redistricting plans for congressional and state legislative
58	58	elections violated Section 5, and a federal court concurred,
59	59	writing that these plans were "enacted with discriminatory
60	60	purpose"; troubling developments in the wake of Shelby include
61	61	controversial changes to city council elections in Pasadena, as
62	62	well as the revival of a redistricting plan for justice of the peace
63	63	elections in Galveston County, which was previously blocked by the
64	64	DOJ; and
65	65	WHEREAS, In the years following its passage, the Voting
66	66	Rights Act guaranteed millions of minority citizens the opportunity
67	67	to make their voices heard by government at the local, state, and
68	68	federal levels, but this progress is being imperiled; although
69	69	efforts to narrow the franchise have grown more subtle than in the
70	70	days of poll taxes and literacy tests, they have by no means ended;
71	71	all of the rights we enjoy as citizens rest on the fundamental
72	72	ability to vote, and it is incumbent upon Congress to safeguard
73	73	access to the ballot by restoring the full force of the Voting
74	74	Rights Act; now, therefore, be it
75	75	RESOLVED, That the 84th Legislature of the State of Texas
76	76	hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to update the
77	77	Voting Rights Act with a set of modern, flexible protections that
78	78	stop discrimination, bring transparency to proposed election
79	79	changes, and hold accountable jurisdictions that discriminate;
80	80	and, be it further
81	81	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
82	82	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
83	83	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
84	84	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
85	85	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
86	86	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
87	87	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.