Democrats craft voting bill with eye on Supreme Court fight As congressional Democrats gear up for another bruising legislative push to expand voting rights, much of their attention has quietly focused on a small yet crucial voting bloc with the power to scuttle their plans: the nine Supreme Court justices.
Democrats face dim prospects for passing voting legislation through a narrowly divided Congress, where an issue that once drew compromise has become an increasingly partisan flashpoint. But as they look to reinstate key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark civil rights-era law diminished over the past decade by Supreme Court rulings, they have accepted the reality that any bill they pass probably will wind up in litigation — and ultimately back before the high court.
The task of building a more durable Voting Rights Act got harder when the high court’s conservative majority on July 1 issued its second major ruling in eight years narrowing the law’s once robust power.
“What it feels like is a shifting of the goal posts,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the left-leaning Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Sparring in Congress for months has focused on a different Democratic bill overhauling elections, known as the For the People Act, which Republican senators blocked from debate on the chamber’s floor last month.
Separately, however, Democrats have held a marathon series of low-key “field hearings” to prepare for votes on a second measure, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which could come to the House floor for a vote in September. The bill would allow courts and the Department of Justice to once again police changes to voting rules in places with a history of electoral discrimination against minorities, a practice the Supreme Court put on hold in 2013.........
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-supreme-courts-courts-voting-race-and-ethnicity-4fc2deafafca64248dad4dfceaf7a05d
