Let's show appreciation and gratitude towards each other's contributions on the board.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 15
Who the hell are you kidding?
John Roberts
Any guesses why the public might view the Supreme Court as political?
Chief Justice John Roberts gave remarks this week in which he pushed back on the public perception that justices might be motivated by politics. “I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty,” he said. “We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate.” You all heard the man. We suspect that many of you may owe him an apology.
But really. It takes an awful lot of … we don’t know what … to say the public is wrong to believe that there might be political interests on this court one week after six judges went out of their way to re-nuke surviving elements of the Voting Rights Act. Four years after nuking the right to an abortion. Three years after affirmative action. Two years after providing Trump broad presidential immunity. A year after curbing the Chevron doctrine. It was a passionate, decadeslong central organizing effort of the Republican Party for 50 years to install a court like this, so that it would make decisions that suited the Republican coalition’s interests. Now it is doing so. Roberts is right that this SCOTUS majority is not “part of the political process.” It’s a product of it. These decisions didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. Slate
No. of Recommendations: 5
I know Roberts laments this view and talks about making unpopular decisions, but this one seems to hurt individual people, and a class race. I'm sure some people have read more on this, but here's Reason on it, and I favor Kagan.
1. Congressional Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act
In Louisiana v. Callais, a 6–3 Court, divided along partisan lines, invalidated a majority-black congressional district as an illegal gerrymander that unconstitutionally sorted voters by race.
The dispute originated in 2022 when a group of voters challenged a new Louisiana congressional map, arguing that it violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition on racial discrimination in voting. A federal judge agreed, so Louisiana added a new majority-black district to its congressional map to comply with the judge's ruling. A different group of voters, however, then challenged that new majority-black district, arguing that it was an illegal racial gerrymander.
Writing yesterday for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that the initial 2022 ruling by the lower court amounted to an impermissible misreading of the Voting Rights Act. According to Alito, that act should come into play "only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race." And the original 2022 challenge to the Louisiana map, Alito argued, "would have failed to show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination based on the totality of circumstances."
Writing in dissent, Justice Elena Kagan offered a different vision of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that Congress, under its power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment's right to vote, can and should be able to "prohibit electoral schemes based on their vote-diluting effects, regardless whether a State could offer up some race-neutral explanation."
In other words, while Alito emphasized the importance of identifying "intentionally" discriminatory state action, Kagan stressed that "even race-neutral [state] actions could perpetuate purposeful racial discrimination." The triumph of the Alito view over the Kagan view means that the Voting Rights Act will now have a very limited role to play in all such redistricting cases going forward.
Me: My summation is that it is now required that you have to prove a discriminatory intent, and the defendant can just say we wanted to retain power.
No. of Recommendations: 1
All that has to happen is have a majority non-white state eliminate ALL red districts. THEN the Supreme Court will be stuck as a perpetual ever-faster whirling dervish that would make Taz look like he is slow-dancing.
No. of Recommendations: 4
All that has to happen is have a majority non-white state eliminate ALL red districts.
from the net sifter:
Hawaii (approx. 20.7% white): The only state with a historic, long-term majority-minority population (primarily Asian and Pacific Islander).
California (approx. 32.6% white): Highly diverse with a large Hispanic and Asian population.
New Mexico (approx. 35.1% white): Features the highest percentage of Hispanic residents in the US.Texas (approx. 37.8% white): Rapidly growing minority population.
Nevada (approx. 42.8% white): Experienced high minority population growth.
Maryland (approx. 45.3% white): Significant Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations.
Georgia (approx. 48.0% white): High Black population concentration.
Florida (approx. 49.1% white): High Hispanic and Black population, particularly in urban areas.
New Jersey (approx. 49.5% white): Became a majority-minority state in the early 2020s.
So, the tactic would be to "investigate" the vote in the counties in the red states among that group, who voted Dem in 24, the way Fulton County, Georgia, and Wayne County, MI, are being "investigated" now, and declare the votes in those counties invalid until the "investigation" is complete, which it never will be.
For instance, in Florida:
Kamala Harris carried only six of Florida’s 67 counties in the 2024 presidential election, as Donald Trump won the state with a 13-point margin. The counties won by Harris were Alachua, Broward, Gadsden, Leon, Orange, and Palm Beach.
Litigate the vote in those six counties, and no Dems from those counties are seated in the House, and all state wide votes, like Gov, Senator, and POTUS, are skewed to the GOP.
...and they will call it "election security".
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 1
the tactic would be to "investigate" the vote in the counties in the red states among that group
There are no red states there. They are all blue--gerrymandered the same way as TN, remember? Supreme Court said so.
No. of Recommendations: 12
