It must be nice to achieve one of one’s life objectives. I am referring to Chief Justice John Roberts, who is leading the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in abolishing the Voting Rights Act. On October 15, the Court heard oral arguments on the future of the Act.
Specifically, the case examines whether Louisiana lawmakers violated the Constitution when they adopted a new electoral map in 2024, creating the state’s second majority-black district. And based on the questions by Roberts and others of the six-person right-wing supermajority, the Court will say yes and outlaw Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Roberts has long opposed the Voting Rights Act. The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), considered the most important of the civil rights acts of the 1960s, opened black participation in elections and politics. Section 5 of the law required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a court before changing voting rules, a process known as preclearance.
Section 2 of the law allowed individuals to sue — with or without the Justice Department’s assistance — to undo existing rules and procedures that denied voters equal political opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. However, Court decisions are eroding these protections.
The end of the VRA began in 2013 with a SCOTUS decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts. Roberts had been a law clerk for Justice William Rehnquist, who had made a reputation in Arizona for opposing voting rights for African Americans. Rehnquist publicly opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thus, his office became a hotbed of young conservative lawyers, including Roberts.
And now Roberts and the other right-wingers on the Court are going after Section 2. Here is how Elie Mystal put it in The Nation.
“The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday [October 15] in Louisiana v. Callais, a case about whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents white people from overrepresenting themselves in Congress. Oral arguments can sometimes sound like the justices are deliberating great and technical points of law, but the outcome in this case was decided long before the lawyers arrived at the courthouse. The six Republican justices are going to declare the Voting Rights Act inert and allow the dilution of Black voting rights through racist gerrymandering. Oral arguments were largely an exercise of the Republicans justifying their racist positions.”
Mystal continues.
Kavanaugh also appears set to abandon his position from just two years ago. Kavanaugh was fixated on what has come to be my least favorite white argument in any hearing about race: “Surely racism has been solved by now.”
Again, I hate this argument. White people enact racist policies, we make laws to try to stop them from enacting racist policies, those laws kinda, more or less, work sometimes, and then white people say, “See, we’ve solved it. We don’t need the law anymore.” As Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, the Republican argument amounts to throwing away your umbrella in a thunderstorm because you’re not wet yet.”
In any event, while Roberts and Kavanaugh twisted themselves into pretzels to go back on their previous rulings, the other conservatives, who were all in the dissent in Milligan [which upheld Section 2 of the VRA in 2023] reprised their feigned abhorrence at considering race to counteract racism. The best way I can describe the arguments from Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett is to say that they think it is OK for white folks in Louisiana to use race to draw discriminatory maps, but it’s not OK for black folks to use race to draw inclusionary maps. As always with these people: white makes right.’ . . .
Some analysts believe that this Supreme Court ruling could result in as many as 19 congressional seats being shifted to the Republicans by means of racially gerrymandering away black voting power.
Given what has come to pass, the only real option for the Democrats is to gerrymander the states they control.
