THIS CONSERVATIVE SUPREME COURT WILL STOP ALL FUTURE NATIONAL PROGRESS

 

                                          …The current U.S. SUPREME COURT

 

Latest Decision for Alabama voters is a sign of what to expect from this Supreme Court

 

We knew that when the former president put three young, conservative, new Supreme Court justices on the court, they would cause havoc at some point.  That has already occurred, when the Justices: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, agreed in a decision with which even the Chief Justice, Roberts, didn’t agree.

Over the objections of this Chief Justice, and the courts three liberals, the conservatives threw out the lower courts decision to throw out a new Alabama congressional map that only included one congressional district with a majority of Blacks.  That is even though today, Blacks make up more than a quarter of the state’s population.

The bogus decision that two of the conservative justices wrote, that the "changes that were ordered by the lower court, came too close to the qualifying voting period, and the primaries, for the fall election.  And to do the change now could create “chaos.”  That’s a lot of Bull.

The court’s ruling was a blow to voting rights advocates and the Democrats after they had a series of redistricting wins over the past several weeks. The court’s decision means that the 2022 congressional elections in Alabama will take place under a map drawn by, you guessed it, the state’s Republican leaders.  Alabama only has seven congressional districts, six of them are held by the Republicans.

“We find that the plaintiffs will suffer an irreparable harm if they must vote in the 2022 congressional elections based on a redistricting plan that violates federal law,” the ruling from the lower court had stated.

The lower court panel was composed of Judge Stanley Marcus from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and District Court Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer, both were chosen by President Donald Trump.  So it wasn’t a lower court decision of only Democratic chosen judges.

The latest SCOTUS decision was very confusing as the same Supreme court had upheld the Arizona voting laws that were found to be unfair to minorities….?

Even though this conservative court says the judiciary has no role in any states gerrymandering claims, they feel they can make this kind of decision that definitely involves the gerrymandering congressional maps.  With most states being run by Republican legislators, the chance for more gerrymandering in those states is very real.

This case is the first for current conservative Supreme Court justices to consider how to apply the Voting Rights Act to racial gerrymandering.  In 2019, the then Supreme Court had said federal courts had no role in policing partisan gerrymandering.  My, how things have changed.

Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged the court’s precedents “have engendered considerable disagreement and uncertainty regarding the nature and contours of a vote dilution claim.” But he said the lower court panel produced “an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction.”

As this Latest decision was a decision of which the Chief Justice did not approve, he has said he would have allowed the lower court opinion to stand for the 2022 election, and it would have set the case for the argument for the next term.

This is just one more decision where a normally conservative Chief Justice decided along with the liberal side of the court.

The dissenting Justice, Elena Kagan, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, who called the order “a disservice to Black Alabamians” who under Supreme Court precedent “have had their electoral power diminished.  This decision was in violation of a law that this Court once knew buttressed all of American democracy.”

This case was part of a nationwide legal battle as states redraw districts after the 2020 Census.  State supreme courts in Ohio and North Carolina struck down congressional maps drawn by their Republican legislatures in those states, saying they violated their constitutions for fairness.

Ohio’s court ruled the legislature had violated a constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering.  The North Carolina judges said the map violated the state constitution’s free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause, and the freedom of assembly clause. In both cases, the maps must be redrawn.

The Justice Department has also intervened in Texas, suing the state over its new congressional map over complaints that it violated the Voting Rights Act by not drawing any additional Latino-majority seats in a state where the population grew by 4 million people, half of whom were Latinos.

Challengers of the Alabama plan said they hoped the setback was temporary.

Alabama’s lone majority-Black district was created by a federal court order, decades ago, and has always been represented by Rep. Terri Sewell, a Black Democrat.

The challengers to the plan passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, and it includes a state senator and the Alabama NAACP. They contend that Sewell’s district had been packed with more Black voters than necessary to ensure a minority candidate would win, and that the rest of the state’s Black voters have been spread across other congressional districts in numbers too small to make a difference.

In the challenger’s filing, they say they have fulfilled Supreme Court precedent by “showing that it is possible to draw an additional majority-Black district in Alabama consistent with traditional districting principles.” They said drawing such districts does not require race “to predominate over other factors. Alabama’s contrary argument seeks a wholesale revision” of Voting Rights Act precedent.

The chances of this Supreme Court allowing the proper revisions of the Voting Rights Act, probably won’t occur in the remainder of my lifetime.

Copyright G. Ater 2022