Supreme Court OKs Texas' Racial Gerrymander

 

In a hyper-partisan ruling even for the MAGAt-dominated Supreme Court, the court affirmed Texas' racially-designed Congressional redistricting favoring Republicans, ordered by the corrupt Malignant Fascist in an attempt to keep the House under his control for the 2026 election.  Justice Elena Kagan wrote the stinging dissent for the minority of three that the redistricting violated the Constitution. From Salon.com:

"The Supreme Court gave Texas the go-ahead to use Republican-favoring maps in the 2026 midterms on Thursday, staying a lower court’s ruling that the maps were likely the result of an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In a blistering dissent many times longer than the court’s order, Justice Elena Kagan hammered the court’s conservatives for the casual way they tossed aside the lower court’s extensive work to determine that race was a key factor in the drawing of the maps.

'The District Court conducted a nine-day hearing, involving the testimony of nearly two dozen witnesses and the introduction of thousands of exhibits. It sifted through the resulting factual record, spanning some 3,000 pages. It assessed the credibility of each of the witnesses it had seen and heard in the courtroom. And after considering all the evidence, it held that the answer was clear,' she wrote. 'Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.' [snip]

'The court issued a 160-page opinion recounting in detail its factual findings. Yet this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record,' she wrote, in a dissent joined by the court’s liberals. 'We are a higher court than the District Court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision.'” (our emphasis)

With this decision, the authoritarian-supportive MAGAt Court stands firmly with the felonious Malignant Fascist in his attempts to maintain power illegitimately in 2026, by rigging Texas' election landscape and allowing MAGA Republicans to choose who will vote for them, rather than the other way around.  It's classic authoritarianism, and it needs to be corrected by pushing for an expansion of the Court when Dems regain Congress and the White House.  In the meantime, if Dem states aren't well underway in redistricting in their states as California had the sense to do, time is nearly up. 

BONUS:  Chris Geidner at LawDork has a great write up on this and on the Republicans in Robes.

(photo: Sergio Flores / Reuters)

 

Obama To California: Vote "Yes" On Proposition 50

 

Former President Barack Obama weighs in on California's Proposition 50, to counter MAGAt Republicans' rigging elections through gerrymandering Congressional districts:

 

Good to see him back in the arena.  More please!

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.

Lower Courts Upholding Voting Rights

 

The courts, for now, seem to be upholding election laws against the Malignant Fascist's and his rotted- out Republican/ MAGAt party's attempts to subvert American democracy.  Decisions in several states in recent days offer glimmers of hope that the flame hasn't yet been extinguished.

Pennsylvania

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that it is unconstitutional for the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania to throw out mail-in ballots simply because the voter didn’t write an accurate date on the return envelope.

The unanimous decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Pennsylvania to stop throwing out such ballots and upheld the decision earlier this year by a federal judge in Pittsburgh.

In its 55-page opinion, the three-judge panel said it had to weigh the state’s interest in throwing out the ballots against the constitutional right to vote.

The panel wrote that it was “unable to justify” the practice of discarding such ballots “that has resulted in the disqualification of thousands of presumably proper ballots.”

Under [Republican- passed] Pennsylvania law, voters are required to write the date on the return envelope for their mail ballot. However, thousands of voters, confused by the request to write the date, might skip it or write another date, such as their birth date.

Tuesday’s decision marks the latest instance in more than a half-dozen cases where a court has instructed election officials in Pennsylvania to count such ballots.

However, higher courts have always reinstated the requirement in the heavily litigated matter that has pitted Democrats and their allies in trying to get rid of the requirement against Republicans who defend it. For Tuesday’s ruling to be reversed, the U.S. Supreme Court would need to take up the issue.

Asked whether they might appeal, the state and national Republican parties said in a joint statement that they were considering their next steps in the case.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania supported the lawsuit against the provision and, in a statement Tuesday, said it is “disenfranchisement and unconstitutional” to throw out a voter’s ballot over the handwritten date. His administration’s lawyers had argued that “meaningless errors shouldn’t cost you your right to vote in Pennsylvania,” he said.

Alabama

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama lawmakers to draw new state Senate districts after ruling the state violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the influence of Black voters around the capital city.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco blocked the state from using the current map in the 2026 elections and said a new map must be put in place that creates a new district in Montgomery where Black voters “comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”

“The appropriate remedy is a redistricting plan that includes either an additional majority-Black Senate district in the Montgomery area, or an additional district there in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a senator of their choice,” Manasco wrote in the 261-page ruling.

The ruling said the court will redraw the districts if the state does not do so in time for the 2026 elections. 

The order came from a 2021 lawsuit that argued the Alabama Senate district lines diluted the voting strength of Black citizens in Huntsville and Montgomery. The lawsuit maintained that in Montgomery, Black voters were unnecessarily packed into a single district, preventing them from influencing elections elsewhere, while white voters in the majority-Black city of Montgomery were “surgically” extracted into another district.

Manasco did not find a Voting Rights Act violation in Huntsville. However, she said that the evidence shows that another Black-majority district could be created in Montgomery...

Utah

The Utah Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.

The current map, adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — Utah’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.

District Court Judge Dianna Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

“The nature of the violation lies in the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in the ruling.

New maps will need to be drawn quickly, before candidates start filing in early January for the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling gives lawmakers a deadline of Sept. 24 and allows voting rights groups involved in the legal challenge to submit alternate proposals to the court.

But appeals expected from Republican officials could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028...

Louisiana

District maps for seats in the Louisiana Legislature violate the federal Voting Rights Act, a panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. Their decision upholds a lower court ruling that found the boundaries discriminated against Black voters. 

The panel’s ruling was issued Thursday in the case Nairne v. Landry, in which Black voters sued the state over redistricting plans the legislature adopted in 2022. The new boundaries for Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives districts did not increase the number of majority Black seats. The plaintiffs alleged they were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. 

The three appellate judges – James Dennis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton; Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush; and Irma Ramirez, an appointee of President Joe Biden – upheld a 2024 ruling from U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana. 

Dick, who former President Barack Obama named to the federal bench, determined the legislative maps do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives. Dick’s ruling came after the 2023 elections, when a new class of lawmakers were elected, yielding a Republican supermajority in both chambers. 

The state appealed Dick’s decision, arguing in part that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and should not be applied to Louisiana. The section prohibits actions and policy that restrict a person’s right to vote based on their race, color or membership in a language minority group.

The 5th Circuit judges disagreed with that argument. 

Their decision said that when Congress approved the Voting Rights Act, “it did so based on overwhelming evidence that ‘sterner and more elaborate measures were needed to address ‘an insidious and pervasive evil,” referring to laws in some states that sought to disenfranchise Black voters. 

The judges shot down the state’s request that it ignore the Supreme Court and disregard the intent of Congress when it outlawed racial discrimination in voting in Section 2.

“This is a historic affirmation of the rights of Black voters in Louisiana,” said Megan Keenan, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project who is representing the Nairne plaintiffs. “Today’s decision sends a powerful message: The Voting Rights Act is still a vital safeguard against racial discrimination in our democracy.” ...

If these decisions are appealed, counting on the Republican Supreme Court (which has already eviscerated the Voting Rights Act to help tip the scales for the MAGAt Republican Party) to uphold the lower court decisions may require a lot of wishful thinking.  The other game at play is simply running out the clock for the 2026 elections through legal maneuvering and delays.  Both of these anti- democratic tactics are right in the Republican wheelhouse.  You also have, in the Malignant Fascist, someone who fantasizes being a dictator and who's proclaimed, " I can do anything I want." 

But for now, check.

(Image:  via aclu.org)

QOTD: Gov. Hochul On "Law Breaking Cowboys"

 

The text of New York Dem Governor Kathy Hochul's remarks yesterday regarding the effort by MAGAt Republicans in Texas to gerrymander 5 new Republican seats in Texas, as ordered by the con man Malignant Fascist:

“I have newsflash for Republicans in Texas. This is no longer the Wild West. We're not going to tolerate our democracy being stolen in a modern day stagecoach heist by a bunch of law breaking cowboys. Americans don't want a system that's stacked against them. They believe in fairness — it's fundamental. And I'll tell you this, they're done with the chaos; they're done with the cruelty; and I would say they're ready to vote Republicans out of power in Washington… Republicans know this. They've seen the polls. They know they're sliding downhill because Americans are rejecting their policies, so this is why they're fighting. They know they'll lose the elections, but to subvert the will of the people, they're hell bent on rigging the system....

What Texas and Republican states are doing at the direction of Donald Trump, I say, is nothing short of a legal insurrection against our Capital… If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they're leaving us no choice, we must do the same. There's a phrase, ‘you have to fight fire with fire.’ That is a true statement of how we're feeling right now. And as I've said, another overused but applicable phrase, ‘all is fair in love and war’ — that's why I'm exploring with our leaders every option to redraw our State congressional lines as soon as possible.” (our emphasis)

The only way forward against the spreading fascism of the corrupt and dictatorial Malignant Fascist is to show the kind of spine that Governor Hochul is showing. We hope her fighting spirit spreads.

BONUS:  California Dems, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, are moving from talk to action, with a plan to redraw 6 Republican districts into oblivion.

(photo: Lindsay DeDario / Reuters)