ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 23, 1996 TAG: 9601230090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
The federal motor voter law, which lets people register to vote while getting drivers' licenses, survived a Supreme Court challenge Monday.
The court rejected California Gov. Pete Wilson's contention that the law infringes on state sovereignty by requiring states to pick up most of the costs.
The law took effect last year and has been a smashing success. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that more than 11 million Americans registered in the last 12 months.
``The door to the voting booth just opened a lot wider, and Gov. Wilson is not in the way,'' said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California.
Seven states have challenged the law, none successfully so far. California's appeal, the first to reach the nation's highest court, was turned away without comment.
The Clinton administration welcomed the court's action.
``Motor voter makes it easier for all Americans to register to vote,'' said Deval L. Patrick, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights division. ``We hope that the few remaining states that are completing efforts to comply with the law will do so promptly. They owe it to their citizens.''
California lawyers said the law wrongly lets Congress ``commandeer state employees'' who previously had no voter-registration responsibilities.
California officials estimate the state will spend at least $18 million in state funds each year to implement the law, formally titled the National Voter Registration Act.
Wilson's appeal said the state's Department of Motor Vehicles will have to hire 58 new employees ``to provide the voter registration services required by the act and maintain existing levels of service.''
A federal judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Wilson.
Other states that have attacked the law in lower courts are Virginia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
In other action, the Supreme Court:
Let stand a $1.5 million award against four Christian Scientists, including the mother of a Minnesota boy who died after his diabetes was treated with prayer instead of medical care.
Ruled unanimously in an Illinois case that defendants convicted in federal courts of drug crimes involving LSD cannot be sentenced under a standard generally more lenient than that required by federal law.
Refused to let Pennsylvania set stricter reporting rules than those imposed by federal law for Medicaid-funded abortions sought by women whose pregnancies resulted from rape or incest or whose life would be endangered by giving birth.
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