Elie Mystal - The Supreme Court Left No Doubt: It Will Gut the Voting Rights Act

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-voting-rights-section-2/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/HjWSL

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday 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.

At issue were maps for Congressional districts in Louisiana. The state has six Congressional districts. After the 2020 Census, the state produced a map where five of those districts were majority white. But Louisiana is only 56 percent white, and 31 percent Black. Simple math should tell you that there should be at least two districts in Louisiana that are majority-minority.

That said, if math is not your thing (and it never is for Republicans when the math doesn’t result in their supremacy over others), then the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment should be. Section 2 of the VRA allows the federal courts to intervene when a state discriminates against the voting rights of Black people. Louisiana was sued by the NAACP after the 2020 census, and a court ordered the state to redraw its maps, producing two majority-minority districts.

A group of white plaintiffs in Louisiana then counter-sued the state over its new, less racist maps, arguing (wait for it) that this application of the VRA violated their constitutional rights. The white litigants were arguing that their overrepresentation in Congress is permissible and that attempts to use the VRA to stop them is the real Constitutional violation.

*snip*

[markodochartaigh]

1. Under an authoritarian regime

those aligned with the Strong Leader have the right to oppress those who are not aligned with the Strong Leader. They consider that right one of their most important rights.

[edhopper]

2. Why did people think otherwise ?

The Roberts Courts always rules against voting rights.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Deadline Legal Blog-Justice Kavanaugh insists on imposing a made-up time limit on the law and the Constitution

The Trump appointee could cast a pivotal vote in a Louisiana case affecting the future of voting rights in the United States. Republicans stand to benefit.

Justice Kavanaugh insists on imposing a made-up time limit on the law and the Constitution www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...

— Philly Joe (@joehick58.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T00:55:54.580Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-brett-kavanaugh-louisiana-voting-rights-limit-rcna237825

The Supreme Court is on the verge of further limiting voting rights, thanks in part to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s unfounded insistence that considering race can only be legal for a certain amount of time into the future — regardless of what the law and the Constitution say.

The Trump appointee’s misguided approach was on display during a major hearing Wednesday in Washington. It was there that he asked a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund when race-based remedies should end. The question came in the context of the landmark Voting Rights Act and key post-Civil War constitutional amendments guaranteeing equal protection (the 14th) and prohibiting race discrimination in voting (the 15th).

The lawyer, Janai Nelson, said that there shouldn’t be a time limit and that the Voting Rights Act section in question — Section 2 — doesn’t even always require race-based remedies. Section 2 prohibits racially discriminatory voting practices or procedures, and it has become even more important after the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, gutted another provision of the act in 2013......

Kavanaugh previously flagged the made-up time limit issue in a case from Alabama in 2023, when he and Roberts surprisingly formed a 5-4 majority with their Democratic-appointed colleagues to back a Section 2 claim. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion that said “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” The Trump appointee noted that Alabama “did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”.....

Whatever one thinks of that as a policy matter, the law and the constitutional amendments at issue don’t have the time limits that the majority appears to wish they did.

And while those justices seem to want to forget the sordid history that made those legal tools necessary, or at least hope they’re no longer needed today, outlawing racial considerations for remedial purposes would also ignore the modern reality. Justice Elena Kagan observed at the hearing that Section 2 lawsuits “ask about current conditions, and they ask whether those current conditions show vote dilution, which is violative of Section 2.” She told the state’s lawyer, Benjamin Aguiñaga, that “what our precedents say and what you’re asking us now to change what our precedents say is that when those things operate currently right as of now and are proved in a courtroom, that — that still there can’t be a race-based remedy.”

“That’s correct, Justice Kagan,” Aguiñaga replied.

The result of curbing Section 2 would be “pretty catastrophic,” Nelson said at the hearing. She said that “any further neutering of Section 2 would resurrect the 15th Amendment as a mere parchment promise.”

The 2013 case was Shelby County where Roberts struck down part of the Voting Rights Act based on his opinion that there was no longer any racial discrimination in the United States. Roberts is a bigoted racist hack who should never have been appointed to the SCOTUS. I fear that the Voting Rights Act is doomed

[Bettie]

4. Hasn't that been John Roberts' dream

since he was a small child? Keeping people who aren't old white men from voting or at least making sure their votes don't count.