In a 5-to-4 vote last summer, the United States Supreme Court effectively struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with the majority arguing that racial minorities no longer face the barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination that they did 40 years go.

The impact of what the court’s decision on Shelby County vs. Holder means for voters and the states will be explored on Tuesday, Oct. 15, at California State University, Northridge’s Gender, Race, Identity & the Law in our Lives (GRILL) discussion at 5 p.m. in the Northridge Center of the University Student Union located on the west side of the campus off Zelzah Avenue.

“The Shelby County vs. Holder decision is already having an impact as a variety of states have enacted, or are working on, new laws that will make voting more difficult and are likely to have a disproportionate impact on various historically disenfranchised groups,” said Lawrence Becker, CSUN’s Eugene C. Price Professor in Political Science and chair of the Department of Political Science. “What many may not know is that one of those historically disenfranchised groups is students. I am sure the panelists will speak to that important impact of this law, among others.”

The lecture’s panelists include Kareem Crayton, an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina’s School of Law; Richard Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California at Irvine; Jane Junn, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California; and Derek Muller, an associate professor of law at Pepperdine University’s School of Law.

Crayton’s research integrates law, politics and race. He is one of the few academics with formal skills in law and political science whose work addresses the relationship between race and politics in representative institutions. He has regularly appeared in The New York Times and on PBS and FOX News. He also served as the lead author on an amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court in Shelby County vs. Holder.

Hasen is nationally recognized as an expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law. His op-eds and commentaries have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and Slate. Hasen also writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog. His newest book, “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown,” was published in 2012.

Junn is the author of five books on political participation and public opinion in the United States. Her most recent book, “The Politics of Belonging: Race, Immigration, and Public Opinion,” co-authored with Natalie Masuoka, was published in 2013. She has been vice president of the American Political Science Association, a Fulbright Senior Scholar, a member of the Social Science Research Council National Research Commission in Elections and Voting, and a member of the National Academy of Science Committee on the U.S. Naturalization Test Redesign. She also was the director of the USC-Los Angeles Times Poll during the 2010 California election.

Muller’s research and writing focuses on election law, particularly federalism and the role of states in federal elections. At Pepperdine, Muller teaches in the areas of civil procedures, complex civil litigation, election law and evidence. Before joining the Pepperdine faculty in 2011, Muller clerked for the Hon. Raymond W. Gruender on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Mo. He then practiced litigation at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago.

For more information about the lecture, call CSUN’s Department of Political Science at (818) 677-3488.

The event is sponsored by the Colleges of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences.

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