Republican Lawyers Who Gutted 1965 Voting Rights Act Seek Millions From Taxpayers

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http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/top-gop-law-firms-seeks-2-million-fees-destroying-voting-rights-act



Whomever said crime doesn’t pay isn’t looking at one of the nation’s top Republican political law firms. The firm is seeking $2 million in legal fees from the government after litigating its “successful” Supreme Court case gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“U.S. Department of Justice lawyers and attorneys from Wiley Rein, who represented Shelby County, Ala., in the voting rights dispute, are expected to fight over two issues: whether the challengers are entitled to fees in the first place and whether $2 million is too much,” reported the BLT: the blog of the Legal Times, earlier this week.

This past June, a U.S. Supreme Court, dividing along the usual ideological lines, struck down the VRA’s Section 4 of the law, which contained a formula used to decide which states and jurisdictions should have to take special steps before making changes to their voting procedures. Essentially, this formula—based on whether changes in voting laws or rules are racially discriminatory—allowed the Department of Justice to prevent most Southern states and a handful of other counties across the U.S, with long histories of discrimination from turning away eligible voters.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, which didn’t throw out the law but dramatically undermined its potential for action, immediately led to red states such as Texas and North Carolina instituting a catalogue of well-known voter suppression tactics. What’s outrageous is that the lawyers who argued the case destroying the law—whose initial funding came from wealthy right-wingers—now want taxpayers to pay them too.

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1. I'm sure Republican lawmakers will find this money somewhere. The Widows and Orphans fund, perhaps.