Randy Cox was sitting in the back of a New Haven, Conn., police van last week, having been arrested on a gun charge, when the vehicle suddenly stopped.

Cox, who was handcuffed and not wearing a seat belt, flew headfirst toward the front of the van’s holding area, smashing his head on the wall and falling to the floor, according to video footage from inside the vehicle published by multiple news outlets.

“Help,” the 36-year-old Black man groaned multiple times.

He remained in that position until he reached the detention center about eight minutes later, when officers dragged Cox out of the van, placed him in a wheelchair, ridiculed him about his posture and dragged him once more into a holding cell, according to body-camera footage. Cox was at the detention center for “10 to 15 minutes” before paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital, New Haven Police Department officials told reporters a day after the June 19 incident.

Now, Cox is paralyzed from his chest down and breathing on a ventilator, his attorneys and family members said at a news conference Tuesday, adding that Cox may never walk again.

Madison Alder
@madialder

NEW: Biden announces intent to nominate two new judicial nominees, including Delaware Supreme Court Justice Tamika Montgomery-Reeves for the Third Circuit

The Supreme Court took a blowtorch to the constitutional right to abortion on Friday, delivering a monumental victory to conservative activists who labored to overturn Roe v. Wade for a half-century. Abortion is poised to be severely restricted or banned in about half of all states with few exceptions.

Last week's ruling also cast a harsh glare on the GOP. For a party that has long cast its priorities as pro-life, Republicans put in minimal effort in recent years to ensure children enjoy a basic standard of living once they're born.

The GOP lined up in fierce opposition to President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan, which contained ambitious initiatives to establish affordable childcare, set up universal pre-K, and overhaul the child tax credit so it was paid out monthly. In early 2020, President Donald Trump endorsed a modest bipartisan paid leave plan that fell flat with Republican lawmakers.

It's prompting some conservatives to urge their party to soften its usual resistance to financially supporting parents and children. Abby McCloskey, a conservative policy expert who worked on past GOP and independent presidential campaigns, called it a "soul-searching moment" for the GOP.

"There's parts of the party that have wanted to break forward and do more types of reforms in the paid leave, child tax credit and childcare space," McCloskey told Insider. "I think that they should get behind those policies quickly, especially because many in the Republican Party were championing the overturning of Roe and here we are," she said.

Leah Litman
@LeahLitman

Last #SCOTUS opinion: Torres v. Texas Dept of Public Safety. Court holds that states agreed to give up their sovereign immunity from lawsuits when the federal government exercises its power to raise & support the Armed Forces. Op is 5-4 by Breyer. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf

I'm very happy that Justice Breyer got to write a majority opinion in a sovereign immunity case!

Leah Litman
@LeahLitman

OK v. Castro Huerta: Kavanaugh writes for 5-4 Court that states have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by "non-Indians against Indians in Indian country."

This is a loss for tribal sovereignty & limits the Court's prior op in McGirt. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf

Justice Gorsuch writes the dissent, joined by 3 democratic appointees.

This is a pretty bad sign about where Justice Barrett will be on tribal law/federal Indian law issues.

I predicted this would be how it would go if Kavanaugh had the opinion:

RBG had been with the 5-4 majority in McGirt v OK, which concluded the Creek reservations remained in tact & reaffirmed tribal sovereignty.

But she was replaced by Barrett, who discarded the cases saying that states can't prosecute crimes on reservations involving Native Ams.

The opening to Gorsuch's dissent:





there will be more SCOTUS opinions, since quickly rolling back an affirmation of tribal sovereignty when #SCOTUS personnel changes isn't already bad enough.

The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Tuesday evening that effectively reinstates racially gerrymandered congressional maps in the state of Louisiana, at least for the 2022 election.

Under these maps, Black voters will control just one of Louisiana’s six congressional seats, despite the fact that African Americans make up nearly a third of the state’s population. Thus, the Court’s decision in Ardoin v. Robinson means that Black people will have half as much congressional representation as they would enjoy under maps where Black voters have as much opportunity to elect their own preferred candidate as white people in Louisiana.

A federal trial court, applying longstanding Supreme Court precedents holding that the Voting Rights Act does not permit such racial gerrymanders, issued a preliminary injunction temporarily striking down the Louisiana maps and ordering the state legislature to draw new ones that include two Black-majority districts. Notably, a very conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied the state’s request to stay the trial court’s decision — a sign that Louisiana’s maps were such a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act that even one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country could not find a good reason to disturb the trial court’s decision.

As the Fifth Circuit explained, current law typically forbids maps that dilute a particular racial group’s voting power, at least when that group is “sufficiently large and compact to form a majority” in additional congressional districts, when it “votes cohesively” and when “whites tend to vote as a bloc” to defeat the minority group’s preferred candidates.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 along party lines to stay the trial court’s injunction, effectively reinstating the gerrymandered maps. The Court’s order is only one page, and it provides no substantive explanation of why the Court’s Republican appointees voted to effectively strip Black Louisianans of half of their representation in the US House of Representatives.

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Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

NEW: By a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court halts a lower court order that had struck down Louisiana's racial gerrymander. All three liberals dissent.

A federal judge found that Louisiana's new congressional map diluted the votes of racial minorities in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and the 5th Circuit declined to halt that ruling. Now the Supreme Court has stepped in to put the ruling on hold.

Although nearly a third of Louisiana's population is Black, Republicans' new congressional map gives Black voters control over just one of six congressional districts.

The Supreme Court has now effectively ensured that this map will remain in place for the 2022 elections.

The new map, which the Supreme Court just reinstated, packs Black voters into a single district, diluting their political power in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But the far-right justices have effectively repealed that provision already.

SCOTUS Just Blew Up the Voting Rights Act’s Ban on Racial Gerrymandering

Here's a link to the order; the liberal justices noted their dissents but did not write. https://supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/062822zr1_9ol1.pdf


The majority also granted cert and will hold the case until it formally eviscerates the Voting Rights Act's ban on racial gerrymandering next term.

Remember: The Supreme Court is not just *allowing* states to pass racial gerrymanders; it's also *prohibiting* states from increasing representation for racial minorities. It claims that increasing Black voting power violates the equal protection clause.

The Supreme Court’s Astonishing, Inexplicable Blow to the Voting Rights Act in Wisconsin

Here is the upshot of the Supreme Court's shadow docket decisions on the Voting Rights Act: The far-right majority has effectively struck down the ban on racial gerrymandering without full briefing or oral arguments, on the basis of a future ruling that it has not yet issued.