Republican SCOTUS May Gut What's Left Of Voting Rights Act

 

Another nail in the coffin of American democracy may be coming, courtesy of the six Republican hacks on the Republican Supreme Court:

The US supreme court is set to hear a case this month that could gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act, effectively killing one of the crown jewels of the civil rights movement and the nation’s most powerful statute to prevent discrimination in voting.

The court’s decision in the case, Louisiana v Callais, could be one of the most consequential rulings for the Voting Rights Act since it was enacted in 1965 and is almost certainly the biggest test for the law since its decision in Shelby county v Holder in 2013, when the justices hollowed out a provision of the law, section five, that required certain places to get voting changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect.

The supreme court is considering the constitutionality of the most powerful remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act: section two. The measure outlaws election practices that are racially discriminatory and has been the tool that minority voters and voting rights advocates have frequently turned to challenge redistricting plans – from congressional districts to county commissions and school boards – that group voters in such a way to dilute the political influence of a minority group.

Getting rid of section two, or severely limiting the ways in which it can be applied, would effectively kill the Voting Rights Act. It would take away the most powerful tool voters have to challenge racially discriminatory districts.

“The stakes are potentially quite large,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the voting rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The outcome of the case will not only determine the next steps for Louisiana’s congressional map, but may also shape the future of redistricting cases nationwide.”  [snip]

“The two key pillars, at least since 1982, were section two and section five,” said Richard Hasen, an election law scholar at the University of California Los Angeles. “Shelby county already knocked down one of those pillars, and this case could potentially either knock it down or render it so weak that you might as well say it’s been knocked down.” He added that weakening but not killing section two might “potentially avoid some of the political cost”.

The case arrives at the court after many of the court’s conservative justices have openly expressed skepticism about the continued need for section two. “The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2023 concurring opinion, a remark that was widely seen as an ominous sign for section two. Justice Clarence Thomas has long publicly said he thinks the statute is unconstitutional when it comes to redistricting.

Even if the Republicans in robes keep a veneer of section two, the Malignant Fascist regime isn't going to file any cases anyway:

The Trump administration has filed a brief in the case siding with the white voters challenging the map and urging the supreme court to make it harder to win a section two case. Since Trump’s inauguration, the justice department has withdrawn from all of its pending section two cases and has not filed any new ones. “Too often, section two is deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a state’s constitutional pursuit of political ends.”

Davis, the former teacher who recalled growing up during segregation, expressed disbelief at the argument that the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed. “The fact that they want to take that away, it’s like we just keep fighting and fighting and fighting, when does it end?”

When does it end, indeed.  

There's much more background and context at the link.

We already have, as a nation, made some catastrophic political decisions that have brought us to this point, starting with the failure of Reconstruction and the subsequent 100 years of Jim Crow, to Mitch McConnell's packing of the Court when Democrats were in power (with an assist by Justice Ginsburg), to the country electing a world- class racist, moron, and charlatan not once but twice.  Now these reactionary justices are salivating at the chance to reverse the last 60 years of voting rights jurisprudence.  Sic transit gloria, America.