Voting Rights Act

Section 2

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act states as follows:

The Supreme Court's interpretation of Section 2 in Mobile v. Bolden (1980) as forbidding only voting practices founded on the “intent to discriminate” prompted Congress in 1982 to amend Section 2 to cover acts with discriminatory effect, not just intentionally discriminatory acts. In Chisom v. Roemer (1991), the Court described the 1982 amendment aptly: “Certain practices and procedures that result in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote are forbidden [under the Voting Rights Act] even though the absence of proof of discriminatory intent protects them from Constitutional challenge” (pp. 383–384).

In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), in which a group of Black citizens sought to establish discrimination as a result of a White majority voting bloc, the Supreme Court set forth three requirements for minority groups seeking to establish a prima facie case under Section 2: (1) There must be a group that is sufficiently large and geographically insular enough to constitute a majority; (2) the group must be politically cohesive in support of its candidate(s); and (3) the majority must generally vote as a bloc so that it can usually defeat the preferred candidate of the minority group.

Further, the Supreme Court held that once the three requirements are established, the “totality of the circumstances” must be examined in order to determine whether there is a discriminatory practice. A nonex-haustive list of factors to be considered includes the extent of any history of discrimination in the state or political subdivision that has impacted the minority group's rights to register, vote, and participate in the democratic process; the extent to which voting in elections of the state or subdivision is racially polarized; the extent to which the state or political subdivision has voting practices or procedures that may lead to discrimination against minority groups; the extent to which minority groups suffer discrimination in education, employment, and health, hindering their ability to effectively take part in the political process; the extent of overt or covert racial undertones in political campaigns; the extent to which members of the minority group have been elected to public office in the state or political subdivision; whether there is significant unresponsiveness by elected officials to the needs of members of the minority group; and whether the policy underlying the voting practice or procedure is tenuous.

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