Roberts' iffy support for voting rights

At the beginning of the 1980s, African American voters made up about one-third of the electorate of Mobile, Ala. Studies showed clearly that these black voters preferred different candidates than white voters, but the nature of the electoral system in the city -- in which candidates for city commissioner were elected by majority vote throughout the entire city -- meant that the candidates backed by blacks were never elected. The two-thirds of the electorate that was white always outvoted the one-third that was black.

African American civil rights organizations sued, claiming that the at-large voting system unconstitutionally "diluted" their votes. But the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, holding that Mobile's election system did not violate the 14th or 15th Amendments because there was no evidence it had been designed with the intent of discriminating against minority voters.

In response, the civil rights community pushed to have Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 amended to allow such a "vote dilution" claim to go forward without proof of discriminatory intent. It would be enough to show that election laws such as Mobile's had a discriminatory effect.

In the Reagan administration at that time was a 27-year-old lawyer named John Roberts. As a special assistant to Atty. Gen. William French Smith, Roberts was a major force behind the administration's efforts to oppose the new Section 2, according to newly released papers. He drafted Op-Ed articles, questions and answers for senators and documents aimed at defeating the new Section 2.

In these documents, Roberts wrote that the new Section 2 would "establish a quota system" and "provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes." He added that it "would be difficult to conceive of a more drastic alteration of local government affairs."

Imposing the new Section 2 nationwide, he concluded, would be "not only constitutionally suspect, but also contrary to the most fundamental [tenets] of the legislative process on which the laws of this country are based."

One could perhaps argue that Roberts' writings did not reflect his personal views and were simply the arguments of a zealous advocate for a client. But the papers I have seen suggest otherwise.