Outgoing Solicitor General: Losing Voting Rights Case Was Biggest Regret

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli speaks during a forum at the Georgetown University Law Center, Friday, March 9, 2012, in Washington. In 16 appearances before the Supreme Court, Verrilli has advocated for the rights... Solicitor General Donald Verrilli speaks during a forum at the Georgetown University Law Center, Friday, March 9, 2012, in Washington. In 16 appearances before the Supreme Court, Verrilli has advocated for the rights of death row inmates and has successfully argued fine points of telecommunications law in cases with billions of dollars in the balance. Now as the Obama administration’s solicitor general, Verrilli faces what for any lawyer would be the challenge of a lifetime: persuading at least five Supreme Court justices to uphold the president’s overhaul of the nation’s health care system. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari) MORE LESS
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Outgoing U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, whose departure from the Justice Department was announced earlier this month, told the New York Times his biggest regret as the federal government’s top trial lawyer was losing in a major voting rights case, Shelby County v. Holder.

“There are some powerful real-world consequences that followed very quickly from that decision,” Verrilli said, in an interview published over the weekend. “It was an iconic statute and an important part of American history. That was a tough loss.”

The court’s 2013 decision gutted a provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that determined which states with a history of racially discriminatory voting laws needed federal approval for implementing new elections procedures. Since the decision, there has been a flood of new voting restrictions passed by states that were formally covered by the law. Some are being challenged in major court cases and legal observers believe the issue will return to the Supreme Court.

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