Guam Has a Racist Voting Law. The Justice Department Is Finally Helping to Fight It.

It took Jeff Sessions to make the department fulfill its duty. 

It looks like Arnold Davis is finally getting some justice. I have written numerous updates about the voting-rights lawsuit that Davis, a retired Air Force officer, filed back in 2011 against the territory of Guam (see here, here, here, and here). Guam refused to allow Davis, a long-time resident of Guam, to register to vote for a plebiscite on the future of the territory because he is white and not Chamorro, the racial designation given to the natives who originally inhabited Guam.

Davis has been represented by J. Christian Adams and the Center for Individual Rights. The Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch Justice Department refused to represent Davis or otherwise assist with the lawsuit. Holder even made a ceremonial visit to Guam in 2012, one in which he voiced no criticism whatsoever of the territorial government, or even of the racist attacks that Guam’s community leaders and government officials have launched against Davis. 

Finally, in March of this year, a federal judge in Guam ruled in favor of Davis and issued a permanent injunction against the territory, barring it from enforcing its discriminatory registration law. Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood held that limiting voter registration to so-called Native Inhabitants of the island violated both the 14th and 15th Amendments. The Constitution does not allow the government “to exclude otherwise qualified voters in participating in an election where public issues are decided simply because those otherwise qualified voters do not have the correct ancestry or bloodline.”

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