The Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education included one governor, three US senators, two attorneys general, the top securities regulator, and a Harvard law professor.
Starting with Nixon and for the next 50 years, all but three of the seventeen appointees served as federal appeals court judges. On today’s Supreme Court, eight of nine were appeals court judges, Eight of nine attended Yale or Harvard law school. Eight served as Supreme Court clerks. None have ever run for office. There are no graduates of public universities.
The Supermajority by Michael Waldman.
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The thugs are shameless.
Back in July, the Supreme Court shocked observers by turning down a chance to do what it loves doing most: dismantle the Voting Rights Act, piece by piece. In Allen v. Milligan, a challenge brought by Alabama voters to a post-census redistricting map, five justices held that the map likely violated Section 2 of the act, which bars states from passing laws that make it harder for people of color to vote. Chief Justice John Roberts, a man who has spent his entire career working to hollow out the act, wrote an opinion that recast himself as a diligent champion of democracy, framing his opinion upholding this section of the VRA as a “faithful application” of long-standing precedent.
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, as he is wont to do in cases that affirm the existence of civil rights, dissented. And Thomas, as he is wont to do in cases he loses, extended a conspicuous invitation to right-wing activists and/or lower court judges in a footnote: The opinion in Milligan, he noted, “does not address whether [Section 2] contains a private right of action.” In other words, whatever Section 2 does or does not permit lawmakers to do, Thomas suggested that the basic question of whether people can even get into courtrooms to enforce it remained something of an open question.
This past week, a federal appeals court took the hint. In an opinion written by Trump appointee David Stras and joined by George W. Bush appointee Raymond Gruender, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reached the novel conclusion that only the federal government—specifically, the attorney general—can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Everyone else, from voting rights organizations to state law enforcers to regular people who are just tired of decennial attempts to gerrymander them out of electoral existence, is out of luck.
Stras’ opinion, if the Supreme Court allows it to stand, is as disastrous for the future of multiracial democracy as it is useful to the conservative legal movement’s policy agenda. Private parties have used Section 2 to bring just about every voting rights case in recent memory. That has been especially true since 2013, when the court in Shelby County v. Holder effectively invalidated Section 5 of the act, which had, until then, been its most robust enforcement mechanism, requiring Department of Justice preclearance to voting changes in certain jurisdictions. In his opinion, Roberts tried to downplay Shelby County’s impact by emphasizing that it “in no way affects” Section 2, which became, by default, the last, best hope for protecting access to the ballot.
The 8th Circuit panel’s decision would snap this already-way-too-thin reed in two. Even under Democratic presidential administrations, the Department of Justice simply doesn’t have the resources to play racism whack-a-mole with every single jurisdiction that tries to evade the Voting Rights Act’s prohibitions. Under Republican presidential administrations, meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act would become an aspirational nullity if private actors were not allowed to seek remedies in court.
It is hard to overstate how much Stras has to strain to reach his preferred conclusion. It is “unclear,” he says, whether the statute provides for a private right of action, which he, for some reason, counts as a strike against it. Moving on to legislative history, Stras acknowledges that both chambers of Congress explicitly declared that they intended Section 2 to permit private lawsuits but deems this evidence irrelevant to resolving the ambiguity he purports to identify. (Nothing says, “Respect for a co-equal branch of government” like finding reasons to ignore that co-equal branch when it says things you don’t like.)
As for literally decades’ worth of decisions, both from the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, that fly in the face of his argument? Stras hand-waves them away as “background assumptions” that he—apparently the first judge to correctly interpret the act in the nearly 60 years since its enactment—is under no obligation to accept. (Ditto the multiple legislative reenactments of the Voting Rights Act that have not yielded any reason to question the private right of action’s existence.) In a profession ostensibly obsessed with incrementalism and restraint, this is a wild power grab.Leave a comment:
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Supreme Court allows drawing of new Alabama congressional map to proceed, rejecting state's plea (msn.com)
Suck it, Alabama.WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the drawing of a new Alabama congressional map with greater representation for Black voters to proceed, rejecting the state's plea to retain Republican-drawn lines that were struck down by a lower court.
In refusing to intervene, the justices, without any noted dissent, allowed a court-appointed special master's work to continue. On Monday, he submitted three proposals that would create a second congressional district where Black voters comprise a majority of the voting age population or close to it.Leave a comment:
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It's totally fine though, they're just good friends. No appearance of COI or QPQ at all.Originally posted by Deutsche Gopher Fan View PostLeave a comment:
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Sotomayor going to Soros fundraisers???
kidding, it’s actually Clarence going to Koch fundraisersLeave a comment:
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Yes, and that is what they want. It would instantly validate the longstanding fascist narrative that all cities are full of violent, dangerous, woke minorities. Which would boost the case for martial law and federal intervention if Republicans regain power.Originally posted by dxmnkd316 View Post
End the right. Don't even elect them to be dogcatchers.Leave a comment:
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Lmao. We're running numbers of a very large project at work with a CAGR on sales of 5% for 10 years and we're getting side-eyed by a number of people. (The accountants, product teams. and sales dept keep pushing that 5%+ is realistic, the rest of us like our heads attached to our bodies so we're sticking with under 5% in our justifications.)Originally posted by LynahFan View PostLeave a comment:
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Housing prices the past 45.X years are up 75% is real dollars.
this excludes private placement transactions.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSALeave a comment:
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Sorry, but given that rent control has been around for 50 years, anyone who bought property during that time knew what they were getting into and should have factored that in to how much they were willing to pay for the property. Anyone who’s had the property longer that? Sorry, no sympathy. According to one index I found, housing prices have had a CAGR of 5.4% for the last 50 years. You’re suing because you wanted 7%?
FOaD, billionaires.Leave a comment:
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