Racial Vote Dilution: Impact of the Reagan DOJ and the Burger Court on the Voting Rights Act

Abstract

Since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the subsequent registration of millions of minority voters, racially based voting discrimination has shiftedfrom a strategy of vote denial to one of vote dilution. The VRA, especially Section 2 and 5, is the dramatic congressional effort to eliminate strategies that deny effective political participation to millions of citizens. However, the VRA has to be aggressively implemented by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and it has to be broadly validated, in concrete cases and controversies in federal courts, if it is to blunt the vote discrimination/dilution strategy. While the Warren Court saw Section 5 as a radical but legitimate tool to end the perpetuation of voting discrimination, the Burger Court has seen Section 5 in less sweeping terms. And while the Carter administration DOJ aggressively supported minority plaintiffs in federal voting rights litigation brought under Sections 2 and 5, the Reagan administration has redirected civil rights policy, including the methodology of implementing Sections 2 and 5 of the VRA.