The most persuasive judicial response to voter suppression laws yet

Two judges — a Reagan conservative and an Obama liberal — stand up against the discriminatory laws sweeping America

Voter ID, Texas
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Eric Gay))

Don't read the federal trial court ruling that struck down Texas's voter ID law on Thursday without also reading Friday's dissent in the roiling dispute over a similar law in Wisconsin. They are different sides of the same coin — one focusing on evidence of voting discrimination in a state, the other focusing on an appallingly blasé response to such discrimination by the federal judiciary. And taken together they represent the most cogent and persuasive judicial response yet to the new wave of voter suppression laws sweeping the nation.

The Texas ruling, by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, reminds us in excruciating detail of how little truly has "changed" in the fight for voting rights in America over the past 50 years, despite what the conservatives of the United States Supreme Court claimed in Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act. After a long trial in which she heard from 68 witnesses, including 54 from voting rights advocates alone, Judge Ramos found that the past, indeed, isn't dead, or even the past, in Texas. The evidence, she found, "describes not only a penchant for discrimination in Texas with respect to voting, but it exhibits a recalcitrance that has persisted over generations despite the repeated intervention of the federal government and its courts on behalf of minority citizens."

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Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and a legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News. He has covered the law and justice beat since 1997 and was the 2012 winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for commentary.