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SCOTUS, Now with KBJ

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Supreme Court allows drawing of new Alabama congressional map to proceed, rejecting state's plea (msn.com)

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.
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Suck it, Alabama.
 
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.
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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.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
1. Disqualify anyone from Harvard or Yale.
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We could have a 100% Harvard SCOTUS and if all the justices were Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurter I'd be fine.

TBH, Yale's SCOTUS justices have been pretty lame though. Alito, Kavanaugh, Fortas, Thomas. Woof. Columbia alone gave us Cardozo, Hughes, and Douglas.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Number one thing they need to do.

1. Disqualify anyone from Harvard or Yale.
2. Disqualify anyone who is Catholic.
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1. DQ, no; vet a broad pool of candidates from other elite law schools, yes.

2. Makes you sound like a Klanbake-era Democrat. One's choice of religious faith (or lack of it) should not be a litmus test for public office. Not every Catholic is a kooky Trad-Cath fascist with an agenda. Not every atheist/agnostic is a brilliant scholar who believes in representative democracy and the rule of law.

Consider a diverse pool of candidates, but make all decisions based solely on record and merit.
 
Kepler said:
I would not have expected Thomas to be the most insane for religious stuff. My guess would be Alito.
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I'm assuming Thomas is going with the "minors don't have rights" angle that he's used in the past; Alito's is probably more straightforward "this is discrimination against a rightwing talking point, never mind any actual harm that occurs."
 
Kepler said:
She is so weird, she is all over the place. She's moderate in some stuff and frothing lunatic in others.
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She seems to be a little more lenient when minors & family are involved, which isn't so surprising to me. But she still votes with her wing 80+% of the time, so let's not pretend she's Roberts-in-training.
 
FadeToBlack&Gold said:
She seems to be a little more lenient when minors & family are involved, which isn't so surprising to me. But she still votes with her wing 80+% of the time, so let's not pretend she's Roberts-in-training.
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Roberts is a shill for the Plutes. He's not moderate, he's on the payroll. He juggles the social votes strictly to keep the gravy train going, the issues are immaterial to him.
 
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