The Blog of Legal Times reports:
The U.S. Department of Justice is fighting a request from the lawyers for Shelby Co., Ala., for more than $2 million in legal fees and costs tied to their challenge of the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act.…The U.S. Supreme Court in June, in a 5-4 decision, struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that established the formula for determining which jurisdictions were required to give the Justice Department or a federal court the authority to review certain electoral changes before they were implemented.
What is even more interesting is the Government lawyer response to the nature of the case:
The department’s attorneys, including Avner Shapiro of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, argue three points against the fee request. Among them: There’s no language in the Voting Rights Act “even hinting that the government consents to having attorney’s fees awarded against it,” Shapiro wrote.
…”The thrust of Shelby County’s lawsuit was to vindicate States’ rights, not to protect federal voting rights,” Shapiro wrote in the Justice Department’s papers.