Black lives matter and so do black votes

Judge Damon J. Keith made it clear that black votes matter.

In a recent dissent, Keith placed voter-suppression initiatives in an 11-page pictorial honoring slain civil rights activists. Keith put a face on voter-denial efforts that disparately impacted impoverished minority voters.

Keith’s dissent stemmed from a case, decided Sept. 13, in which U.S. Sixth Circuit Judges Danny Boggs and John Rogers (both Republican appointees) upheld voter-suppression initiatives enacted by a Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature.

In his 38-page dissent, Keith contextualized the voter-suppression initiatives in 11 pages of photographs memorializing slain civil rights martyrs, including Emmett Till; Medgar Evers; the four little girls Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair; and Viola Gregg Liuzzo.

By placing flesh on legal arguments, Keith suggested that many are killed to monopolize the vote. Keith anchored Ohio’s voter-suppression strategy within that context: honoring the dead, while placing the white supremacy that ruthlessly murdered them front and center.

The case involved homeless voters challenging Ohio laws that mandated a technical perfection requirement as to the date of birth and address on absentee and provisional ballots; reduced the number of post-election days to cure absentee and provisional ballot imperfections from 10 to seven days; and limited the assistance poll workers can provide voters unless those voters voluntarily identified as blind, disabled or illiterate.

The challenged voter-suppression laws were a fraction of the Ohio Legislature’s attempts to enact 18 voter-suppression measures in 2010, following the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.

After a 12-day trial, Judge Algenon L. Marbley (a Democratic appointee) authored a 112-page opinion finding that the challenged voter-suppression initiatives violated the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause.

After making its own factual findings and creating new legal precedent, the majority opinion upheld the district court’s finding that the technical perfection requirement on the absentee ballots violated the Voting Rights Act, but overruled the district court’s finding that the other provisions violated the act and that all of the challenged provisions violated equal protection.

The majority upheld the Ohio Legislature’s efforts to dilute the black vote generally and, in particular, a sub-class of homeless, under-educated, and disabled black voters. Rather than allowing the majority to annihilate constitutionally this subcategory of voters, Keith contextualized the struggle for the right to vote in the socioeconomic reality and historical subjugation of minorities.

According to Keith, white supremacy provided the backdrop for the latest rounds of voter-suppression initiatives. He challenged the majority’s conclusion that a subcategory of homeless, illiterate black persons was a “subcategory ... too insignificant to partake in equality protection.” When it comes to racial discrimination in voting, Keith wrote, there is no such thing as a “subcategory too insignificant to partake in equality protection.”

Like the Black Lives Matter movement, Keith challenged the idea that black votes do not matter and subcategories of black voters are too insignificant for equal protection.

All votes matter, even those some may see as entirely too insignificant.

Blanche Bong Cook is an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School.