OHALAH Resolution About the Decision of the United States Supreme Court Concerning the Voting Rights Act of 1965
The statement below was adopted as an OHALAH Board Statement on June 26, 2013, and adopted as an organization-wide OHALAH and RPA resolution on July 5, 2013.
We respond with sorrow to the news that the United States Supreme Court has struck down parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The decision came down on 17 Tammuz. On this day, we remember the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem and the shattering of the first set tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Moses’s heart broke when he saw his community choosing idolatry and wickedness. Our hearts break at the SCOTUS decision and its implications for Americans of color and for all of us.
The SCOTUS decision reads, in part, “In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics…Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines.” Halevai — would that it were so! But we do not believe that racism is over.
The New York Times notes that although the Court upheld Section 5, which protects voters in the places where discrimination has been the worst, “without Section 4, which determines which states are covered, Section 5 is without significance — unless Congress chooses to pass a new bill for determining which states would be covered.” We fear that leaving it to Congress to reach consensus on where discrimination happens (before steps can be taken to ameliorate the discrimination) is tantamount to inaction. And inaction means that the discrimination can not only continue, but flourish.
17 Tammuz was the day when the walls of Jerusalem began to fail. This is one of the places in our world today where the walls of human rights, the walls of justice, the walls of empathy and compassion are cracking and becoming unsound.
In this week when we recall the daughters of Zelophechad and their struggle for their own rights, we recognize that progress often involves taking two steps forward and one step back. We recognize that every breakage is also an opening. May we bring light to this world’s broken places, and justice to everywhere marred by its absence. Speedily and soon.
The statement below was adopted as an OHALAH Board Statement on June 26, 2013, and adopted as an organization-wide OHALAH and RPA resolution on July 5, 2013.
We respond with sorrow to the news that the United States Supreme Court has struck down parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The decision came down on 17 Tammuz. On this day, we remember the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem and the shattering of the first set tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Moses’s heart broke when he saw his community choosing idolatry and wickedness. Our hearts break at the SCOTUS decision and its implications for Americans of color and for all of us.
The SCOTUS decision reads, in part, “In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics…Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines.” Halevai — would that it were so! But we do not believe that racism is over.
The New York Times notes that although the Court upheld Section 5, which protects voters in the places where discrimination has been the worst, “without Section 4, which determines which states are covered, Section 5 is without significance — unless Congress chooses to pass a new bill for determining which states would be covered.” We fear that leaving it to Congress to reach consensus on where discrimination happens (before steps can be taken to ameliorate the discrimination) is tantamount to inaction. And inaction means that the discrimination can not only continue, but flourish.
17 Tammuz was the day when the walls of Jerusalem began to fail. This is one of the places in our world today where the walls of human rights, the walls of justice, the walls of empathy and compassion are cracking and becoming unsound.
In this week when we recall the daughters of Zelophechad and their struggle for their own rights, we recognize that progress often involves taking two steps forward and one step back. We recognize that every breakage is also an opening. May we bring light to this world’s broken places, and justice to everywhere marred by its absence. Speedily and soon.