The central grievance motivating today's conservative legal movement—and the Republican Party more broadly—is that any measure to correct the country's pattern of discrimination against minorities In fact discriminates against his group.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
“Can a federal court use a card as a remedy that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race?” asked Justice Neil Gorsuch.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
Republicans, including members of the Court, don't like Section 2, not least because black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Suppressing black votes is in their direct party interests. So to destroy the VRA, right-wing justices are grotesquely reaching for the Reconstruction Amendments to turn the promise of equal protection into a fatal flaw. In the story they tell, harvesting black voters in Louisiana to ensure that about 30 percent of its population can elect only one of its six representatives in Congress is not racial discrimination. But by demanding that the state draw a new map in which that third is better represented—perhaps by drawing a second district in which black voters make up a larger portion of the voting population— is racial discrimination against white voters.
“Can a federal court use a card as a remedy that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race?” asked Justice Neil Gorsuch.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
The same frustration animated right-leaning justices Wednesday as they heard a case that could kill Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which voting rights groups routinely use to argue that states are diluting minority voters in a given district to reduce their voting power. Section 2 is the last weapon in the landmark civil rights legislation that the Roberts Court has not yet destroyed, and it became a bulwark against mostly red state legislatures, often in Confederate states, that used clever line-drawing to ensure that white voters always had disproportionate power over blacks in choosing the representatives of their choice.
Republicans, including members of the Court, don't like Section 2, not least because black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Suppressing black votes is in their direct party interests. So to destroy the VRA, right-wing justices are grotesquely reaching for the Reconstruction Amendments to turn the promise of equal protection into a fatal flaw. In the story they tell, harvesting black voters in Louisiana to ensure that about 30 percent of its population can elect only one of its six representatives in Congress is not racial discrimination. But by demanding that the state draw a new map in which that third is better represented—perhaps by drawing a second district in which black voters make up a larger portion of the voting population— is racial discrimination against white voters.
“Can a federal court use a card as a remedy that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race?” asked Justice Neil Gorsuch.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
This is why “black lives matter”—a call to acknowledge the disproportionate violence and death black people suffer at the hands of the state—is met with “all lives matter.” This is why DEI has become a rallying cry to move away from memorializing and commemorating civil rights achievements. This explains why Republicans' fixation on protecting free speech evaporates as soon as they are confronted with speech they don't like (sayrally to protest the authoritarian behavior of the Trump administration). According to this view, civil liberties are a zero-sum game, so any protection of minority groups must indirectly harm the majority group.
The same frustration animated right-leaning justices Wednesday as they heard a case that could kill Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which voting rights groups routinely use to argue that states are diluting minority voters in a given district to reduce their voting power. Section 2 is the last weapon in the landmark civil rights legislation that the Roberts Court has not yet destroyed, and it became a bulwark against mostly red state legislatures, often in Confederate states, that used clever line-drawing to ensure that white voters always had disproportionate power over blacks in choosing the representatives of their choice.
Republicans, including members of the Court, don't like Section 2, not least because black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Suppressing black votes is in their direct party interests. So to destroy the VRA, right-wing justices are grotesquely reaching for the Reconstruction Amendments to turn the promise of equal protection into a fatal flaw. In the story they tell, harvesting black voters in Louisiana to ensure that about 30 percent of its population can elect only one of its six representatives in Congress is not racial discrimination. But by demanding that the state draw a new map in which that third is better represented—perhaps by drawing a second district in which black voters make up a larger portion of the voting population— is racial discrimination against white voters.
“Can a federal court use a card as a remedy that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race?” asked Justice Neil Gorsuch.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
This is why “black lives matter”—a call to acknowledge the disproportionate violence and death black people suffer at the hands of the state—is met with “all lives matter.” This is why DEI has become a rallying cry to move away from memorializing and commemorating civil rights achievements. This explains why Republicans' fixation on protecting free speech evaporates as soon as they are confronted with speech they don't like (sayrally to protest the authoritarian behavior of the Trump administration). According to this view, civil liberties are a zero-sum game, so any protection of minority groups must indirectly harm the majority group.
The same frustration animated right-leaning justices Wednesday as they heard a case that could kill Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which voting rights groups routinely use to argue that states are diluting minority voters in a given district to reduce their voting power. Section 2 is the last weapon in the landmark civil rights legislation that the Roberts Court has not yet destroyed, and it became a bulwark against mostly red state legislatures, often in Confederate states, that used clever line-drawing to ensure that white voters always had disproportionate power over blacks in choosing the representatives of their choice.
Republicans, including members of the Court, don't like Section 2, not least because black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Suppressing black votes is in their direct party interests. So to destroy the VRA, right-wing justices are grotesquely reaching for the Reconstruction Amendments to turn the promise of equal protection into a fatal flaw. In the story they tell, harvesting black voters in Louisiana to ensure that about 30 percent of its population can elect only one of its six representatives in Congress is not racial discrimination. But by demanding that the state draw a new map in which that third is better represented—perhaps by drawing a second district in which black voters make up a larger portion of the voting population— is racial discrimination against white voters.
“Can a federal court use a card as a remedy that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race?” asked Justice Neil Gorsuch.
His questions during Wednesday's oral arguments did not express concern about the map of racial discrimination that Louisiana has drawn — but he was very concerned about the corrective map he was forced to pass to give black voters more power. WhatBy his standards, this was real discrimination. (All lives matter.)
When the Roberts Court ruled Shelby vs. Holderthe 2013 decision that gutted the part of the VRA that required regions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to undergo “pre-clearance” before passing new voting laws, the result was predictable. Red states, many of them part of the old Confederacy, passed a host of new voting restrictions.
The outcome in this case, if everything goes as the Court's conservative majority indicated Wednesday, will be the same.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected from a VRA district,” said Janay Nelson, an attorney for the appellants, referring to districts created to increase minority voting rights. “We only have diversity in the South, for example, due to litigation that forced the creation of voting districts under the Voting Rights Act. [Black] the judge in Louisiana was elected through the VRA constituency, and almost all members of the legislature were elected from the same districts.”
We already know what the consequences of this latest blow to the VRA will be because we, as a country, have been through this before. This meant the complete exclusion of blacks from the political process. This meant an unfortunate shortage of black legislators. In Louisiana, “no black person sat in the Louisiana Legislature from the 1880s until 1967,” according to the appellant's statement. 1967 was two years after the VRA was passed.
Right-wing justices resisted openly acknowledging such a future and instead chose to pseudo-intellectualize the issue at hand by declaring that they were repulsed by “racial discrimination” when race was taken into account to correct the theft of black suffrage.
They probably won't repeal Section 2 entirely: Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a doll on a string, reiterating that Louisiana and its allies are not seeking to “eliminate” Section 2 or rule it unconstitutional; Judge Amy Coney Barrett said they were only seeking “clarification” of 40 years of precedent, not overturning it. They will likely find some procedural-sounding way to neutralize the law, perhaps by silently overturning congressional amendments that eliminate the need to prove that a state intentionally discriminated in its maps, which is difficult to do.
It is no exaggeration to say that before the VRA, the United States was not a true democracy. And Republican opposition to this arose immediately when President Nixon complain that its pre-clearance requirements were punitive towards the South. Advisers to President Ronald Reagan, including current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, tried convince him to veto an amendment that would ban voting practices that lead to racial discrimination, even if you can't prove government intent.
The right to vote in the United States has never been guaranteed for minority groups. Even now, the governor of Illinois is warning that President Trump is using the military for the express purpose of intimidating voters and denying them the sacred right to vote in the midterm elections. The Supreme Court is acting in its own way, threatening one of the last defenses of our multicultural democracy.
