Kinston Residents Win Chance to Pursue Voting Rights Lawsuit

A handful of residents in the small city of Kinston won a decisive victory on the large stage recently after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit kept alive a lawsuit that could have huge ripple effects throughout the country.

The decision revives a court battle that has raged for years over Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and eventually could lead to a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The panel of three judges in the appeals court concluded that plaintiff John Nix could suffer a loss if he is forced to run as a candidate in partisan elections because Democrats in Kinston tend to vote along party lines. The panel said the lawsuit must proceed.

‘This is an important case’

Kinston City Council had refused to defend Nix and his fellow plaintiffs.

The appeals court decision overturns a U.S. District Court ruling that only government officials could challenge the Voting Rights Act in court. Nix said he was happy with the decision because the case has merit.

“This is an important case,” he said. “There’s a bigger argument here than just for Kinston. I’m just standing in the gap, doing the will of the people.”

Daren Bakst, director of legal and regulatory studies for the John Locke Foundation, said the decision to grant the case standing is important because private citizens are challenging it.

“They are challenging the reauthorization of the law,” Bakst said. “They aren’t challenging what the law did as applied to Kinston, but the law itself.

It’s big because it’s going after the entire law.” Bakst said the highest court in the land could strike down Section 5 as unconstitutional.

“Now that the plaintiffs have standing the case can move forward,” he said. “This could affect everybody if it goes to the Supreme Court.”

‘It’s an outdated thing’

The original 1965 Voting Rights Act was put in place to guarantee the rights of black voters who had been threatened and intimidated before and during the civil rights movement. Section 5 of the law requires state and local governments to get preclearance from federal officials before making changes in election procedures that could dilute the voting rights of blacks.

Section 5 was supposed to apply for only five years. But it has been reauthorized time and time again over the past 46 years, and the Kinston plaintiffs said enough is enough.

“It’s an outdated thing,” said Nix, a Republican running for the Kinston City Council. “We’re ready for new things
here.”

In 2008, voters approved a referendum making local elections nonpartisan by a 2-to-1 margin. Sixty-four percent
of registered voters in Kinston are black.

However, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice rejected the referendum, saying it could have “a discriminatory purpose or a discriminatory effect.”

As a result, five Kinston residents, including Nix, challenged the law. Nix said individuals had to make their case in court after the city council voted 4-1 not to appeal DOJ’s decision.

“They [council members] shirked their responsibility, and we, as a group of citizens, are doing what the voters wanted to do,” he said. “It’s been hard being named as the damaged party, but I’m not doing it for selfish reasons. I’m doing it for the cause of the community.”

Longtime Kinston City Councilman Joe Tyson, an African-American who is named as a plaintiff in a countersuit filed by the NAACP, said he originally supported the nonpartisan elections, but changed his mind when city leaders refused to break the town into wards and districts.

‘It should be very diverse’

He said this was important because most Kinston City Council members live in the more affluent western area of town, and none are from the poorest neighborhoods.

“The city council needs to represent the population of the city,” he said. “It should be very diverse. That’s my issue from the beginning, and it’s still my issue.”

Tyson said black Kinston residents did not understand what they supported in the referendum.

Tyson said his opposition to nonpartisan voting has come at a cost after state Rep. Stephen LaRoque, a Republican from Kinston, claimed Tyson was a racist because he belongs to the NAACP.

LaRoque has battled the state chapter of the NAACP publicly for leading several demonstrations that disrupted the General Assembly, including one at which state NAACP President William Barber was arrested and had to be removed by police from the Legislative Building during its session.

LaRoque also is one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit. Tyson said he may sue LaRoque for defamation of character.

“They are targeting me and calling me a racist for disagreeing with them,” he said. “My good name is being disparaged. Those nasty comments are coming from the same guy who is bringing the lawsuit.”

LaRoque was not available for comment at press time.