by JULIÁN AGUILAR
Texas Tribune
The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected Texas’ application for preclearance of its voter ID law, saying the state did not prove that the bill would not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters.
“The department’s letter states that Texas did not meet its burden under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of showing that the law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters, and therefore the department objects to the Texas voter identification law,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman. “According to the state’s own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack the required identification.”
The bill, Senate Bill 14 by Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, was one of Gov. Rick Perry’s “emergency items” during the 82nd Legislature and requires voters to present a state-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license, military ID, U.S. passport or concealed handgun license before casting a ballot.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who expected the federal government’s rejection, said late last week he plans to forge ahead with the lawsuit he filed last month to have the bill implemented immediately. The Justice Department has until April 9 to respond to the lawsuit.
Abbott has cited the department’s rejections of recently passed laws similar to Texas’ voter ID law, not to mention that less-than-subtle warning from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who said in Austin in December that the department would place Texas’ law under a microscope.
“It [the request] was submitted to them in July, and they kept delaying and delaying and delaying,” Abbot said on Thursday. “We saw them reject a similar proposal in South Carolina and we couldn’t see them rejecting South Carolina and approving Texas.”
The voter ID law “would have trampled on the constitutional right to cast a ballot for hundreds of thousands of Texans, said Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña, praising the Justice Department’s ruling. “Republicans have wasted enough taxpayer dollars defending this voter suppression legislation.”
The Texas NAACP and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus filed a motion to intervene in the state’s lawsuit against the federal government that seeks immediate implementation of the state’s voter ID law. During a conference call this afternoon with reporters, attorneys for the groups said the lawsuit will move forward independently, despite today’s decision by the Department of Justice.
“I expect that Texas will come in and complain to the D.C. court about the objection letter. But formally, technically the state in this lawsuit has the burden of proof,” said Bob Kengle, co-counsel and the co-director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. “So the issue is not whether Texas satisfied its burden of proof on its submission to the Justice Department.”
