John Roberts on why the VRA should not be amended (1981)
The New York Times reports: He produced a torrent of memorandums explaining why the Reagan administration was right to oppose new provisions in the Voting Rights Act that had just passed the House with an overwhelming majority.
He drafted op-ed articles for his boss, Attorney General William French Smith, and he circulated talking points warning that Congress - by trying to make it easier to prove voting rights violations - was on the verge of creating "a quota system for electoral politics." He scribbled angry notes on newspaper articles that showed an official from another department was veering off-message.
It was 1981 and John G. Roberts Jr. was 26, two years out of Harvard Law School and an eager combatant in the political wars - including the one over the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was up for renewal in Congress. In general, he wrote to one of his mentors after three months on the job: "This is an exciting time to be at the Justice Department. So much that has been taken for granted for so long is being seriously reconsidered." ...
He argued, according to a January briefing paper to prepare Attorney General Smith for Congressional testimony, that the House bill would essentially "establish a quota system for electoral politics, a notion we believe is fundamentally inconsistent with democratic principles." He added that "at-large systems of elections and multimember districts would be particularly vulnerable to attack, no matter how long such systems have been in effect or the perfectly legitimate reasons for retaining them."
He drafted an op-ed article for Mr. Smith warning that the bill would "gradually lead to a system of proportional representation based on race or minority language status." And he prepared Mr. Smith for a meeting at the White House with a memorandum that declared: "The president's position is a very positive one and should be put in that light. He is for the Voting Rights Act and wants to see it extended."
He added, "That is essentially the president's position - if it isn't broken, don't fix it." ...
Richard L. Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, noted that views could change over time, but added that Mr. Roberts in 1981-82 "showed a pretty strong disagreement with the efforts to make it easier to prove vote dilution."
Mr. Hasen added, "I certainly think that had the Roberts view prevailed, we would have many fewer minority elected representatives in Congress and in state and local government." -- Roberts Helped to Shape 80's Civil Rights Debate - New York Times