Thread
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 But the far-right justices have effectively repealed that provision already.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.

Death Row inmate Domineque Ray hoped that when he took his final breath, he could find comfort in the presence of his Muslim spiritual adviser. But the Alabama prison where Ray was awaiting execution wouldn't allow it. Prison officials would only allow their own Christian chaplain to offer the prisoner solace from inside the execution chamber. They said it would be a security risk to let someone into the room who wasn't an employee of the state's corrections department. Ray's imam, Yusef Maisonet, could only watch from the next room, behind glass.

Ray challenged that decision, and a federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a stay of execution until it could determine whether the prison had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by preferring one religion over another.

But the next day, by a vote of 5-4, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to go forward. Ray's life ended Thursday night, by lethal injection. His imam watched from a separate room, The Associated Press reported.

Just a day after the Supreme Court issued a radical decision on gun rights, it officially declared Roe v. Wade a dead letter. In all of the tumult surrounding the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, even eagle-eyed Court watchers would have been forgiven for overlooking one curious detail. After all, it was overlooked when it appeared in the draft opinion that was leaked in May. Nestled among Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments laying waste to nearly 50 years of abortion precedent lurked an unassuming footnote documenting a narrative advanced in amicus briefs submitted to the high court. These “friend of the court” briefs, Justice Alito explained, “present[ed] arguments about the motives” of those favoring “liberal access to abortion,” namely “that some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population.”

According to Alito, claiming abortion is a tool of racial genocide is not beyond the pale. “[It] is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect.” After all, he noted “[a] highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.” As further support for the view that abortion has functioned as a tool of eugenics, Alito cited Justice Clarence Thomas’s separate opinion in 2019’s Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, a challenge to an Indiana law that prohibited abortion where undertaken for reasons of race or sex selection or because of the diagnosis of a fetal anomaly. The Court declined to review the law, deferring the question of the constitutionality of such “reason bans” to another day. While Justice Thomas agreed with the decision to decline review, he nonetheless wrote separately to emphasize that the day was coming when the Court would have “to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana’s,” which, in his view, merely reflected a “compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”

A Leon County circuit judge is expected to rule Thursday on a request to block a new Florida law that bars abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy, after a battle of expert witnesses played out in court Monday.

Judge John Cooper will hear closing arguments Thursday, the day before the law (HB 5) is scheduled to take effect. Cooper said he intends to rule from the bench about whether to issue a temporary injunction sought by plaintiffs.

Abortion clinics across the state and a physician who performs abortions filed the lawsuit June 1 against numerous defendants, including state attorneys, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Simone Marstiller.

The lawsuit hinges on an argument that the law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on April 14, violates a privacy clause in the state Constitution.

“As the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, this broad right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide to terminate a pregnancy,” an introductory part of the lawsuit said.

A Leon County circuit judge is expected to rule Thursday on a request to block a new Florida law that bars abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy, after a battle of expert witnesses played out in court Monday.

Judge John Cooper will hear closing arguments Thursday, the day before the law (HB 5) is scheduled to take effect. Cooper said he intends to rule from the bench about whether to issue a temporary injunction sought by plaintiffs.

Abortion clinics across the state and a physician who performs abortions filed the lawsuit June 1 against numerous defendants, including state attorneys, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Simone Marstiller.

The lawsuit hinges on an argument that the law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on April 14, violates a privacy clause in the state Constitution.

“As the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, this broad right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide to terminate a pregnancy,” an introductory part of the lawsuit said.

Last week, the Supreme Court eviscerated a woman’s right to abortion, undermined Miranda rights, expanded gun rights and allowed border patrol agents to operate with even further impunity. Today, it ruled that a former Washington state high school football coach can pray on the field immediately after games—regardless of the religious backgrounds of the students.

The mostly conservative justices are using the Constitution as a smoke screen for their rulings—which will continue to demolish even more human rights. The governing document was constructed during the Constitutional Convention that occurred in Philadelphia from May 5, 1787 to September 17, 1787.

The primary authors consisted of: John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. The last two men on that list owned slaves. How can this set of laws still guide a nation when it was concocted by white men who looked at Black people as property and not as human?

The fact that a Black man—Justice Clarence Thomas—is working to erode the rights of millions of people is more than ironic: it’s downright pathetic. In a concurring opinion Thomas wrote Friday, he claimed that the Supreme Court’s controversial June decisions aimed to weaken substantive due process which protects certain rights even if they’re not listed in the Constitution.

“As I have previously explained, ‘substantive due process’ is an oxymoron that ‘lack[s] any basis in the Constitution,’” he wrote. He also said that it’s “legal fiction” that is “particularly dangerous.” Even more ironically, how is it up to the states to decide a woman’s right to abortion yet not interfere with a person’s right to carry a concealed firearm?

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday that Democrats want to pass legislation that would guarantee access to abortions, protect women’s health care data and enshrine other federal protections, after the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights in its ruling last week.

House Democrats are exploring pushing measures that would protect women’s health data collected in period tracker apps and ensure that women can travel for abortions to states where the procedure remains legal, Pelosi wrote in a letter to other House members Monday.

She also urged Senate Democrats to strike down the filibuster to get the measures passed.

“While this extremist Supreme Court works to punish and control the American people, Democrats must continue our fight to expand freedom in America,” Pelosi wrote. “Doing so is foundational to our oath of office and our fidelity to the Constitution.”