Justice Elena Kagan, concluding her blistering dissent in yesterday's anti-democracy Republican-majority SCOTUS' heinous ruling in Louisiana v. Callais:
The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process. The decision here is about Louisiana’s District 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s District 2. See supra, at 33–34. 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. If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. And minority representation in government institutions will sharply decline. At the first stage of this judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act, the Court maintained that Section 5 was no longer needed because in recent decades “African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 553; see id., at 549. At this last stage, the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril. I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.
The white nationalist Republican MAGAt party is rejoicing. What do we do? How about for starters electing a Democratic House and Senate, then a junkyard dog Democratic President. Then expand the Court and pass a new Voting Rights Act that learns from and builds on the hard lessons learned in the past 50 years. Don't ever let these damned bastards win again. Next time we have to finish the fight once and for all.
BONUS: More comments and discussion from --
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