The Voting Rights Act: What Are the Implications for Texas and Houston?

The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Section Five of the Voting Rights Act: What Are the Implications for Texas and Houston? The first of a series.

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated decision in a case brought by a small Austin area utility district challenging a vital section of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). When the case was argued on April 29th, the critical tenor of questions and comments put to defenders of the law suggested to most observers that a majority of the court was prepared to declare Section Five of the VRA unconstitutional. That would surely have ignited a political firestorm in the voting rights forest.

Of course, that did not happen. Chief Justice Roberts punted the big issue down the road by saying in his 8-1 majority opinion that, while times have changed from the bad old days of the 1960s and 1970s, and thus maybe the original special provisions of the landmark legislation were no longer needed, there was no pressing need to rule on that big issue this week. So, at least for a couple of years, the full act as passed by Congress and renewed in 1975, 1982, and 2006 remains the law of the land.

What does this mean for us here in Texas and Houston? Let’s start with a little history lesson. When President Lyndon Johnson pushed the original Voting Rights Act through Congress in 1965, overcoming a 80 plus day filibuster in the U.S. Senate, Texas was not subject to the special provisions of the VRA. Those provisions were applied to only a few deep South states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia that had especially bad records of denying black citizens their voting rights. It is not surprising that LBJ left his home state off the “bad conduct” list – he was, after all, a cagey political operator who needed every vote he could muster in the Senate to shut down the filibuster, including that of Ralph Yarborough of Texas. The state’s then senior senator was one of just two members from states that seceded from the Union in 1861 who broke with their southern colleagues and supported the VRA in 1965. If Texas had been subject to the special provisions of Section Five requiring that all political jurisdictions in the state would have to “preclear” any changes in their voting rules or procedures with the U.S. Justice Department or a federal court in Washington D.C., Yarborough may well have been forced to oppose the historic legislation.

Section Five of the VRA quickly proven to be a powerful level for opening the door to meaningful political participation for blacks across the deep South, but, again, it did not apply in Texas. When, how, and why did that change?

The change happened in 1975 when Congress extended the VRA for another seven years. Why was Texas now included? Mostly because while President Johnson was dead and gone, another Lone Star State politician was moving toward a race for the White House – U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. But Bentsen had a big problem with minority voters who were a growing force in Democratic presidential politics. The junior U.S. Senator had won his seat by defeating Ralph Yarborough, a favorite of liberals and minorities, in a very rough 1970 primary. To strengthen his presidential position, Bentsen was convinced by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, a national star after the Nixon Impeachment hearings, that he must not only support extending the Voting Rights Act to his home state, but that it must also be amended to bring under its protection Hispanics as well as African Americans. The powerful combination of Barbara Jordan in the House and Lloyd Bentsen in the Senate secured both these major changes in the original VRA.

The maneuver did not end up helping Bentsen, whose presidential race fizzled in 1976, but when the VRA was reauthorized in 1982 and 2006, these 1975 changes were left intact, so Texas remains one of 16 states covered by Section Five. But unlike the other large states of New York, Florida, and California, the entire state, including several thousand local governments, is subject to Section Five. Add to that the fact that we have two large and growing minority groups (Latinos and African Americans now account for almost half the Texas population), plus Vietnamese Americans who are covered by the VRA in selected jurisdictions, and one can begin to appreciate why Texas had the most at stake in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder. Our next couple of posts will explore some of the ramifications of this decision at the state and local levels.

Comments

[JJ]

So Barbara Jordan (African-American woman, highly respected, for those who don't know local political history) was elected to represent the Houston-area in Congress before the VRA pre-clearance section was applied to Texas? And I believe she was elected to a couple terms in the state house before going to Congress. So why is it that Texas -- or at least the Houston area -- was judged to have had a horrible voting rights denial history? Sounds like it was really just Bentsen's personal ambitions that saddled us with millions of dollars of compliance costs, lawyers etc. I see on Houston City Council now that we have elected at-large 3 women, 3 African-Americans, 1 Latino last-named woman, 2 gay women, and 1 old white guy. Doesn't seem like anyone's voting rights are being impaired these days.