"Today, the Court undermines Section 2 and the right it provides. The majority fears that the statute Congress wrote is too “radical”—that it will invalidate too many state voting laws. See ante, at 21, 25. So the majority writes its own set of rules, limiting Section 2 from multiple directions. See ante, at 16–19. Wherever it can, the majority gives a cramped reading to broad language. And then it uses that reading to uphold two election laws from Arizona that dis-criminate against minority voters. I could say—and will in the following pages—that this is not how the Court is sup-posed to interpret and apply statutes. But that ordinary critique woefully undersells the problem. What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten—in order to weaken—a statute that stands as a monument to Amer-ica’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses.What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute de-signed to bring about “the end of discrimination in voting. I respectfully dissent." -- Justice Elena Kagan's dissent today in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (pdf). She was joined by fellow progressive Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
This is a challenge to Democrats to pass comprehensive voting rights legislation now, before we lose our democracy to the autocratic seditionists.
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