Everyone agrees, I believe, that voting rights are a good thing. But not everyone agrees that everything done in the name of voting rights is a good thing, and that everyone includes the Board of Directors of the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 [MUD] in Austin, Texas, which has just filed a suit in federal court challenging Section Five of the Voting Rights Act that was recently re-enacted, the “pre-clearance” provision.
When the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 wanted to move its sole polling place from a residential garage to a school four years ago, it had to pay a lawyer $1,250 to file a letter with the U.S. Department of Justice and wait two months for permission to make the change.
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The MUD filed its lawsuit in a Washington federal court on Aug. 4, days after President Bush signed legislation renewing the act. The district is arguing that its voters are being punished for conditions that never existed in the neighborhood of upper-middle-class homes.
“This little district has never discriminated against anybody,” said Greg Coleman, an Austin lawyer who is representing the district pro bono.
‘Badge of shame’
Coleman said he believes the lawsuit is the first filed by a Texas political subdivision invoking a provision in the law to “bail out” from preclearance. The requirement “lacks any continuing justification and is nothing more than a badge of shame that Congress, without any cognizable justification, has chosen to continue in place,” the lawsuit states.
