How SCOTUS is ignoring a key voting rights provision of the Constitution: legal scholar

[justaprogressive]

During President Donald Trump's second administration, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been mentioned in many articles and cable news conversations — often in reference to birthright citizenship. Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship, according to countless legal scholars, is blatantly unconstitutional because birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th Amendment.

But birthright citizenship isn't the only important part of the 14th Amendment, which also contains the Reduction Clause in its Section 2.

Michael Meltsner, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston and former NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney, discusses the importance of the Reduction Clause in an article published on Friday, June 13 — and wonders if the U.S. Supreme Court of 2025 respects it.

"Sometime in the next two weeks, when the justices of the Supreme Court meet in conference," Meltsner explains, "they will decide the fate of an unusual under-the-radar lawsuit brought two years ago to enforce what the lawmakers who amended the Constitution in 1868 thought was the 'most important' clause: Section 2 of the 14th Amendment…. If a state unduly restricts the right to vote, it will lose representatives in the House to states that do not, as well as votes in the Electoral College."

Meltsner adds, "The framers of what is known as the Reduction Clause wanted to make sure that the states of the Confederacy readmitted to Congress would not swell their number of Representatives based on the now-eligible-to-vote number of formerly enslaved people, and then find ways, not always explicitly racial, to disfranchise those voters."

https://www.alternet.org/meltsner-scotus-voting-rights/

[republianmushroom]

1. Just a little Supreme Court cherry picking.