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John Roberts on Segregation, Voting Rights and Civil Rights
Written by Independent Judiciary Alliance for Justice
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Excerpts from a report by the Independent Judiciary Alliance for Justice
*Roberts explained the Department’s position that, “the objective of a proper desegregation remedy” was simply “the end to official discrimination on the basis of race,”4 a position that effectively eliminated much of the government’s traditional role in working to eradicate the effects of prior discrimination.
*After a 1980 Supreme Court decision, Mobile v. Bolden, dramatically weakaned certain sections of the Voting Rights Act, Roberts was involved in the administration’s effort to prevent Congress from overturning the Supreme Court’s action. Roberts joined the Administration in opposing the “Section 2” extension of the Act, strongly supported by both the House and the Republican-controlled Senate, which would have reinstated the effects standard. Instead, he participated in the effort to amend the extension of the Act so that voting rights plaintiffs would continue to have to prove discriminatory intent, a much harder task.
* Roberts co-authored two briefs on the government’s behalf arguing for court supervision to be lifted in school desegregation cases. In a 1990 case, the amicus brief co-authored by Roberts in his capacity as Deputy Solicitor General sought to weaken the standard and limit the timeline for court-enforced desegregation decrees in the nation’s schools.
* In another case, however, Roberts was successful in challenging a minority preference program. He again wrote an amicus brief for Associated General Contractors of America, who took the side of a contractor challenging the Department of Defense’s program granting bid preferences to small, minority-owned businesses.33 Plaintiffs argued, much as they had in Adarand, that the Defense Department’s program, which promoted bids from socially and economically disadvantaged individuals (SDBs), was unconstitutional because it lacked the evidentiary findings necessary to support the implementation of a program with race-based classifications, or, alternatively, that the program was not sufficiently tailored to pass constitutional muster.34 The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s decision to uphold the statute, remanding the case to the lower court with orders that the court conduct further findings and apply a lesser standard of deference to Congressional intent.
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