I fear this is a portent of things to come.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Within hours of Donald Trump being sworn in as president Friday, a Corpus Christi federal court postponed a scheduled hearing in the Texas Voter ID case until next month at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lawyers for the Justice department asked for a delay in the hearing scheduled for Tuesday, citing the change in presidential administrations.
“Because of the change in administration, the Department of Justice also experienced a transition in leadership,” the Justice Department petition states. “The United States requires additional time to brief the new leadership of the Department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the Court.”
In the past, the agency has asked that hearings in the case be expedited because of the issues involved.
The Corpus Christi court agreed to the delay, postponing the hearing until Feb. 28.
A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs expressed disappointment at the delay.
“This delay for us is not in the interest of resolving a case that has been going on for far too long,” said Leah Adeh, senior counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represents one of the plaintiffs. “We all have been expending far too many resources on it, and we really want a hearing to get to a decision that this law needs to be struck down.”
Aden said she did not have any reason to believe the delay was a deliberate move to weaken the case against the law, but said elections are upcoming, and a resolution needs to come quickly.
See here and here for the background. Rick Hasen expects that the Justice Department will now switch sides in litigation like this, and he notes that the incoming deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights in the DOJ has a long history of defending redistricting plans in court. So that’s awesome. As a reminder, this hearing was about the question of whether the voter ID law had discriminatory intent, which would void the law and could put Texas back under preclearance, not that this would mean much for the next four years. The law had already been found to have a discriminatory effect and was thus in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a ruling that was upheld by the Fifth Circuit and has been appealed to SCOTUS. The fight is far from over and the good guys still have a good shot at it, but it has gotten a lot harder. Politico and the Brennan Center have more.
Pingback: SCOTUS will not review voter ID ruling – Off the Kuff