Once again, the Republican Supreme Court has weighed in via its "shadow docket" (as it has on several other occasions) to roll back precedent and democracy:
The U.S. Supreme Court further undercut the Voting Rights Act on Monday, blocking for now the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Alabama for the 2022 election.
The court's action came on an emergency appeal from Alabama, which challenged a decision by a three-judge federal court panel that included two Trump appointees. The lower court concluded that under the Voting Rights Act, Alabama, a state with a population that is more than one-quarter Black, could reasonably, and therefore must, create two majority-Black districts out of seven congressional districts.
The Supreme Court vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court's three liberals in dissent. All four would have refused to intervene now, thus allowing the 2022 election to go forward with a map calling for two majority-Black districts. In contrast, the five-justice majority decision means that for at least another election cycle, Alabama will have just a single majority-Black congressional district, because the primaries are set to take place in May. [snip]
Once again, the court's action came in an unsigned order, without full briefing or argument, though the court will eventually hear arguments in the case, either later this term or, more likely, next fall.
"Accepting Alabama's contentions would rewrite decades of this Court's precedent" about the Voting Rights Act, wrote Justice Elena Kagan in a dissent joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. "Here the district court applied established legal principles to an extensive evidentiary record. It's reasoning was careful — indeed exhaustive — and justified in every respect," and to do this on the court's "shadow docket" without full briefing and argument first "does a disservice to Black Alabamians who ... have had their electoral power diminished — in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy."
This lawless gaggle of Republican extremists, three of which are on the Court thanks to the lawless Malignant Loser and his "Old Crow" partner Moscow Mitch McConnell, has already shown itself eager to block challenges to partisan gerrymandering, roll back and neuter a woman's right to a legal and safe abortion, sabotage a state's ability to impose COVID vaccine requirements in state hospitals during a pandemic that's killed 900,000 Americans, and refuse to give the Biden Administration the same deference it gave the neo- fascist Malignant Loser. With this action, there should be no doubt that this ultra- reactionary Court is in the business of culture and political warfare, not legal adjudication based on precedent.
If there has been any doubt so far, there can be none now: this is an simply operational arm of the Christofascist, white nationalist, reactionary Republican Party. It's not a legitimate institution of government.
BONUS:
the supreme court steadily dismantling the voting rights act is very much in keeping with its historic role as the institution more likely to *undo* congress’ work defending the civil and voting rights of all americans than it is to protect it
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) February 8, 2022
