Jessica Levinson writes:

In 2013, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted, with prescient clarity, what is happening right now in Georgia. Ginsburg knew then, when the Supreme Court threw out half of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, that it would be open season for voter suppression in states previously covered under the act.

And here we are facing that reality with a sweeping and unquestionably restrictive new voting law passing on a party-line vote in Georgia late last week. It came mere months after President Joe Biden won Georgia’s electoral votes and after Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won runoff elections for the U.S. Senate in Georgia.

Now two big lawsuits are being brought in Georgia, both to challenge that voting law. Both suits were filed in federal court (the first suit was filed by the New Georgia Project and other organizations, and the second suit was filed by the NAACP along with other organizations), and both allege that Georgia’s law violates the remaining portion of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, which guards against voting laws that discriminate on account of race, color or membership in a language minority group. They also argue that the law amounts to unconstitutional discrimination. [Continue reading…]