The new Trump judge revolt against the Voting Rights Act, explained
The Supreme Court, after a long period of hostility toward any claim brought under the federal Voting Rights Act, recently signaled that this hostility has limits. Last June, the Court surprised nearly everyone who follows voting rights litigation by declaring Alabama’s racially gerrymandered maps illegal and ordering the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district.
Yet if the Supreme Court’s June decision in Allen v. Milligan (2023) was supposed to be a signal that the justices intend to keep at least some safeguards against racism in elections in place, several Republican appointees to the lower courts missed the memo. Last week, as most Americans were thinking about their Thanksgiving dinners, a pair of federal appeals courts handed down some of the sharpest attacks on the Voting Rights Act — the landmark 1965 law prohibiting race discrimination in US elections — in the law’s history.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last June, the Court surprised nearly everyone who follows voting rights litigation by declaring Alabama’s racially gerrymandered maps illegal and ordering the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district.
Indeed, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023) that Section 1983 gives private individuals broad authority to sue to enforce their statutory rights.
The entire purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to prevent Jim Crow states, including Georgia, from running their elections in ways that depart from the federal commitment to racial equality.
The 15th Amendment prohibits states from denying or abridging the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and it provides that “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court’s Republican appointees simply made up a doctrine — “the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty” — that is never once mentioned in the Constitution in order to justify striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
At the very least, Stras’s and Branch’s opinions are likely to force the Supreme Court to resolve this tension between Milligan and its previous, less justifiable decisions undercutting the Voting Rights Act.
The original article contains 2,866 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 93%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!