Blog post from SCOTUSblog. Written by Lyle Denniston . Preclearance requirement sought for Texas on voting The Obama administration, seeking to salvage significant power to stop racial discrimination in voting even after a major defeat in the Supreme Court, will be asking federal courts to put the state of Texas under a continuing duty to get official permission in Washington for any changes it wants to make in its election laws or methods. Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed that plan Thursday in a speech to the annual meeting of the Urban League, in Philadelphia. Holder said the Justice Department will ask a federal district court in Texas to apply the “preclearance” requirement under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Texas. That could only be done now, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last month in Shelby County v. Holder, by having a court apply the so-called “bail-in” provision of the 1965 law’s Section 3. That provision was left intact by the Supreme Court.
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