Senate VRA Committee Report Now Available

I recently blogged about the controversy over the Senate Report accompanying the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. The report is now available. You can access the bill via THOMAS here. My sense of reading the majority's report is that it is primarily factual, though the facts that are highlighted are those that may be used by opponents of section 5 who want to attack the provision's constitutionality. Senators Cornyn and Coburn (here) more directly raised constitutional objections and object to the process. All eight Democratic members dissented in a brief dissent. Here is the dissent in full (excluding footnotes):

We object and do not subscribe to this Committee Report on S. 2703, the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act (VRARA), which by including Additional Views signed by the Chairman, has become a very different document than the draft Report circulated by the Chairman on July 24, 2006. As sponsors of the Senate legislation who have supported it, pressed for its enactment and voted for it, we must register our disappointment that this Report does not reflect our views or those of scores of other cosponsors, does not properly describe the record supporting our bill, and does not fully endorse the bill we introduced and sponsored and that we and all Members of the Committee voted to report favorably to the Senate. Although the Senate Committee Report filed today does not make any findings based on the extensive record created in both the House and Senate, those findings can be found in the text of the legislation itself. We submit these additional views to note for the record the unique procedural posture of the Committee's actions today.

On July 19, 2006, the Committee debated and voted on two amendments to the VRARA. No other amendments were offered and there was no further clarifying debate during this session. Then, the Committee unanimously voted to report the legislation favorably to the full Senate. The following day, on July 20, 2006, the full Senate debated H.R. 9, the companion bill that had been passed by the House of Representatives. No amendments were offered and the Senate voted 98-0 for final passage.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Report on the VRARA is being filed close to a week after the Senate unanimously passed its companion bill, H.R. 9.

At the time of floor debate and consideration of final passage of H.R. 9 in the Senate, Senators had the following to inform their vote: the extensive Senate Judiciary Committee record, including thousands of pages of testimony; the full record before the House of Representatives, including thousands of pages of testimony; the House Committee Report; and the full debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, including debate surrounding four substantive amendments to H.R. 9 that were all rejected. Most importantly, at the time they voted, all Senators had before them the detailed findings in Section 2 of the legislation. These findings are identical in H.R. 9 and S. 2703 and, as reauthorization measures, both incorporated the statutory findings within the following provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 203(a); Section 4(f)(1); Section 10(a); and Section 202(a).

At the time of floor debate and consideration of H.R. 9 in the Senate, no draft Senate Committee Report was available to Senators.

By voting to pass the legislation, Congress has adopted and reaffirmed the detailed findings in H.R. 9. The Senate unanimously adopted these findings. Nothing written by a Member of Congress after final passage can diminish the force of those findings contained within the enacted legislation itself or the Member's vote supporting them. As several courts have suggested, post-passage legislative history is a contradiction in terms. Any after-the-fact attempts to re-characterize the legislation's language and effects should not be credited.
Patrick J. Leahy.
Edward M. Kennedy.
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Herbert Kohl.
Dianne Feinstein.
Russell D. Feingold.
Charles E. Schumer.
Richard J. Durbin.

-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
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