What Does Discrimination Look Like to Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones?
Before any of the attorneys even uttered a word, Judge Edith Jones already sounded irritated.
She called the case before her and the two other Fifth Circuit judges “twice-chewed food.” She even seemed to caution the lawyers: “Given that, maybe you can stimulate us.”
The occasion was a hearing last week on Texas’ strict voter ID rules, which the state is pushing to implement despite multiple rulings that lawmakers first passed them in 2011 with discriminatory intent. Jones sounded unenthused that the case’s circuitous route through the courts had brought the issue back to her bench.
On appeal last year, the majority of Fifth Circuit judges agreed that Texas’ voter ID rules were discriminatory in effect but basically punted on the issue of legislative intent and sent the case back to the trial court. Jones, a University of Texas School of Law graduate and Reagan appointee with a reputation for being one of the most conservative judges on the country’s infamously conservative federal appeals court, responded with a biting dissent that scolded her Fifth Circuit colleagues for even keeping the issue of racist intent alive without smoking-gun evidence. She compared anyone who buys the argument that Texas lawmakers intentionally passed a racist law to “Area 51 alien enthusiasts.”
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/fifth-circuit-appeals-judge-edith-jones/