Obama Administration Ignores Illegal Racial Discrimination In Voting Against Whites, Koreans, and Filipinos in Guam

Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Rice v. Cayetano (2000), racial exclusion from voting is unconstitutional, even when the victim is white, and the government claims the exclusion is needed to protect the interests of a local minority group.  Thus, there is no “affirmative action” exception allowing the government to deny non-minorities the right to vote.

But the Obama Administration continues to ignore the Supreme Court’s decision, and turned a blind eye to racial discrimination in voting against Koreans, whites, Filipinos, and Asians in the U.S. territory of Guam, who are excluded from voting in referendums based on their race. As a former Justice Department lawyer notes,

Once again, the Obama Justice Department is refusing to enforce federal voting-rights laws in a race-neutral manner.

On Monday, the Center for Individual Rights (in conjunction with J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ lawyer and author of Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department) filed a class-action federal lawsuit against the territory of Guam, alleging blatant racial discrimination against non-Chamorro residents of Guam in an upcoming election. CIR and Adams were forced to act because the Justice Department refused to do anything about this unlawful discrimination.

“Chamorro” is the racial designation given to the natives who originally inhabited Guam and constitute about 36 percent of the population. Guam is a territory that today has many residents of Western European, American, Asian, and Pacific Islander descent. But all of those other residents are barred by law and the Guam Election Commission from registering and voting on the plebiscite over Guam’s future relationship with the United States.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Arnold Davis, is a former Air Force officer who has been a resident of the island since 1977. When he tried to register for the plebiscite, his application was rejected and marked as “void” by the Guam Election Commission because Davis is white.  .  .

Guam . . . bars anyone who is white, Asian, or Filipino from voting in this plebiscite, and even makes it a crime for them to try to register.

Guam is unapologetically and unabashedly violating federal law. Section Two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the “denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Section Two was derived from (and is authorized by) the 15th Amendment, the post–Civil War amendment that established that the right of American citizens to vote could not be “denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Both the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment apply to all U.S. citizens, including residents of Guam. Further, the 1950 Organic Act of Guam . . . states that no “discrimination shall be made in Guam against any person on account of race.” . . .

Arnold Davis complained to the Obama Justice Department about this racial discrimination starting in 2009. A Justice Department source familiar with his complaint tells me that the word quickly came down from the political appointees in the front office of the Civil Rights Division that no action would be taken. As with the voter-intimidation lawsuit filed by the Bush administration against the New Black Panther Party — which was quickly dismissed by the Obama administration, even though the case had been won — Davis’s complaint was ignored.

DOJ declined to file a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act . . .As we know from the sworn testimony of former Voting Section chief Christopher Coates before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes informed him that it was the policy of the Obama administration that the Voting Rights Act is not to be enforced against racial minorities, no matter how egregious the violation. As CIR president Terence Pell says, the fact that this racial discrimination “continues to take place under the nose of the U.S. Department of Justice is unconscionable.”