In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
Gerrymandering against a racial group is bad. OK. Gerrymandering in favour of a racial group is bad. OK by me. For, obviously enough, gerrymandering in favour of whites – say and as an example – would be gerrymandering against blacks, and in favour of blacks against whites.
Positive racial discrimination is still racial discrimination, right?
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”. The court’s decision on Wednesday is the latest in a series that dismantled the law, she wrote, including a major decision in 2013 case, Shelby County v Holder, that nullified another major provision in the law that required places with a history of discrimination to get changes pre-approved by the federal government before they went into effect.
“Under the court’s new view of section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. In fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.
“Today’s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter,” she continued. “The decision here is about Louisiana’s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.”
Kagan is judging this on the outcome she prefers. Which is not how a constitutional court is supposed to work – rather, to judge on whether the law meets the tests of the constitution. As with Dobbs. Not whether there’s some way we can legalise abortion using the constitution, but does the constitution say the Feds have power over abortion? If the answer to two is no then that’s that – a matter for the States. Racial discrimination is Bad, M’Kay? So, nope, don’t do that.
Doesn’t this fall under “packing v spreading” and came to fame/notoriety in North Carolina?
The way I first heard the story was that spreading could increase black representation up to 4x.
It is sad, indeed tragic, that American politics still runs along these lines.
It is worse that districts for elections above the local administration should be set by the local authority.
The Electoral Commission may not always get it right ( 2010 election debacle, where some hopeless Blair Babe was in charge ) but it is a tool beyond local government corruption.
To raise it ‘beyond local government corruption’ leaves it in range of ‘national government corruption’.
And these are Congressional districts – they are not ‘above’ ‘local administration’ (ie, state level government). We do not have a unified national government from lowest to highest levels but a dual-sovereignty system.
This is my point. A Federal body acting on Federal elections would ignore/override these racial considerations, but as John77 points out, it creates a whole new form of coruption.
The federal government are the ones that originally *mandated* the racial discrimination though.
“Hopeless” really is not the right word, “biassed” might be better, “conniving” better still.
But the 2005 election is the one about which to complain – Labour got one seat for every 23k votes, the Conservatives got one for every 53k votes. A little of this is down to the winner getting more-than-proportional seats in FPTP but the overall shares of 35.2% and 32.4% means that cannot have been significant. The proncipal cause was the misdirections given to the Electoral commission by Blair’s government, requiring them to discriminate in favour of Labour-supporting Scotland and Wales and against Unionist-supporting Ulster and in favour of Labour-supporting inner cities.
If I understand the US sites correctly, this might be the most consequential Supreme Court ruling ever – as long as the largely southern states which have fallen victim to this clear election thievery have the gumption to do something about it quickly, but the long march through the institutions of the west suggests that not only may they not have the gumption, but they may also not have the desire.
Florida is on the move though.
Louisiana district 6 includes the city of St George, a white district which has broken away from greater Baton Rouge with the aim of having a city removed from the domination of the black vote. Specifically St George people want their own school district to get their kids away from the black-dominated schools of Baton Rouge. While it is fair and old-fashioned liberal to say racial districting is bad, a voter is a voter and race shouldn’t matter, it probably isn’t much fun to be in a minority when the majority votes its own interest.
It is a useful heuristic that whatever Ketanji Brown Jackson says is the opposite of correct.
Which is the opposite of what happened. The court rendered Section 2 (and, of course, the constitution) *effective* – until this ruling people had been *mandating* racial discrimination in voting.
The USSC has said that racial discrimination is not allowed.
Its Orwellian – if you discriminate its not discrimination, if you stop discriminating then you have started discriminating.
States like Florida are going to have to move bloody fast in order to have the new boundaries in place for the mid-terms.
I had thought the dem’s were a shoe-in to take control of both houses and thereby stymie the second half of Trump47. This gives the Republicans a lifeline but will they take it? The supine if not downright treacherous voting of many RINO senators and congressmen leads me to suspect that even now vital states will sit on their hands and a last best chance will be thrown away.
As with Tories, with RINOs, who needs Dems (or Labour)?
American voters have short fuses – and good for the Septics. No hanging on in quiet desperation for them.
But there’s this odd thing there at the moment whereby Rep voters have understandably despaired of the RINO indifference to the platform on which Trump was elected, so the mid-terms were a RINO bust even before the Iran war. But then, why would that matter if the RINOs were the de facto opposition to their own President?
But then, but then, but then, Trump does his shucks and aw thing with the Be-regheaded ones, and so now the Rep base has absolutely nowhere to go. As I understand it, they mostly don’t like what he’s done in Iran. They’re screwed by the Congress and they’re now screwed by their own guy.
Perhaps it’s not that weird after all. More of the same old.