Login
FAQ
Search
According to a contract released last week, South Carolina taxpayers will now be on the hook for the same price to pay for Clement's services defending an illegal voter ID law:
South Carolina taxpayers will be on the hook for a high-powered Washington attorney's $520-an-hour rate when the state sues the federal government this week to protect its voter ID law.
That litigation could cost more than $1 million, according to two South Carolina attorneys who have practiced before the U.S. Supreme Court.
S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson has more than five dozen staff attorneys to handle the state's legal affairs, but Wilson hired a former U.S. solicitor general to litigate the voter ID case at a rate of $520 an hour, a contract obtained last week reveals.
South Carolina's taxpayers aren't just paying this unnecessary and unnecessarily high fee, they are paying it to defend illegal voter suppression. Voter ID laws are popular among conservative lawmakers because they disproportionately disenfranchise students, low income and minority voters — all of whom tend to be more likely to cast votes for left-of-center candidates than the electorate as a whole. Accordingly, these laws exist for the purpose of shifting the electorate rightward.
Such manipulation of the electorate isn't just disturbing, it is also illegal because the federal Voting Rights Act prohibits state laws that which are either passed specifically to target minority voters or which have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. If the courts pay even the barest heed to the law, they will strike South Carolina's voter ID law down in a heartbeat.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/30/414614/haley-hires-lawyer-voter-suppression/
