State VRAs Bring Problems of Their Own

Walter Olson

The federal Voting Rights Act can be viewed, in part, as implementing the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on denying or abridging the right to vote based on race. But in practice, the law goes much further than that, which is one reason it remains controversial. VRA lawsuits pursuing the logic of “disparate impact” often force localities to discontinue old election rules that were in no way motivated by race. Moreover, as the Supreme Court has noted with disapproval, the law’s...