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VOTING RIGHTS ACT APPLIES TO JUDICIAL ELECTIONS, U.S. TELLS COURT

The Bush administration Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to extend a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to judicial elections so that black and Hispanic voters would be assured of having a chance to elect state judges of their choice.

But lawyers representing Louisiana and Texas argued that the law does not allow challenges by minority groups who say their voting power is diminished by the system their state uses to elect judges.

Currently, 41 states, including Illinois, elect some or all of their judges.

U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, the administration`s main courtroom lawyer, urged the court to overturn a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Section 2 of the act does not apply to judicial elections. Section 2 guarantees minorities equal opportunity to ”participate in the electoral process and to elect representatives of their choice.”

In a case challenging Texas` countywide election system for trial courts, the appeals court said judges do not qualify as ”representatives.” The appellate court then dismissed a Louisiana case that raised the same issue in elections for the seven-member Louisiana Supreme Court.

”Judges elected by the people and accountable to the people in every sense are representatives,” Starr argued.

But the attorney for Louisiana, Robert Pugh of Shreveport, said, ”No way, under any stretch of the imagination, can `representative` include the judiciary.” He added that the judiciary`s only constituency was ”the blindfolded lady with the sword,” a reference to justice.

Texas Special Assistant Atty. Gen. Renea Hicks argued that Congress never thought about judges in passing the original Voting Rights Act or in amending it in 1982.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has become a powerful tool for minorities challenging the way congressional representatives and local officials are elected. In recent years, minority voters in 10 states have sought to invoke the act`s protections in judicial elections. They have argued that many at-large voting systems prevent minority candidates from being elected even though they have large numbers of supporters.

The Supreme Court twice-including last fall-has ruled that a separate part of the act, Section 5, does cover judicial elections. That provision requires most Southern states and parts of some Northern states to get Justice Department approval before using new apportionment plans or making other changes in their voting systems.

A third case argued Monday, also from Louisiana, raises the issue of what kinds of remedies federal judges can order when a state violates Section 5.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the minority voters who filed the Texas and Louisiana challenges seemed to be arguing for proportional representation on the bench. ”I think the suggestion here is that members of the black community wanted a member they could identify as their own,” he said.

”We don`t claim . . . it`s a right to have a black person sitting on the bench,” said University of Virginia professor Pamela Karlan, who argued on behalf of the Louisiana voters.

”It`s not proportional representation. It`s a right to participate in the system equally with all other voters,” Karlan said.

While the race of a judge elected from a minority district would be of

”tremendous symbolic importance,” Karlan said, ”if the citizens of Orleans Parish chose to elect a white person to the Supreme Court, we would be satisfied.”