“Ninth Circuit considers Guam’s racially discriminatory plebiscite registraton law”

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has this piece on Davis v. Guam and the arguments before the 9th Circuit this week:

“Therefore, Davis claims that this racial prerequisite for registering to vote violates the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and other federal civil rights statutes. However, a district court ruled against him on the theory that he suffered no injury from the statute that excludes him, on racial grounds, from registering to vote because the election has not been scheduled and may not occur,

Try to imagine the reaction to this argument if it were applied to defeat the claim of a black prohibited by law from registering to vote in a prospective election due to his race.

Mr. Davis is represented by, among others, Christian Adams of the Election Law Center, Terry Pell of the Center for Individual Rights, and Doug Cox of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. All three, I’m proud to say, are friends of Power Line. . . .

Guam tried to defend its race-based voting requirement on the theory that Guam represents a special case because its native population was never polled as to whether it wanted to become part of the United States. Chief Judge Kozinski countered that “native inhabitants” have never been polled when the United States claimed their land as American territory. In general, he seemed unconvinced by Guam’s arguments.”