It’s just a massive coincidence that it’s rulings all favor Republicans, as they implement their racist agenda to once again deprive African Americans, other minorities, and Democrats generally, of the right to cast a meaningful vote, assuming they are allowed to vote at all.
Today the court stayed a lower court ruling that found -surprise-surprise- that recently drawn voting maps in Alabama “violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters to elect their chosen candidates”. We need not pause to wonder if the lower court was factually correct, such a result being the whole point of these exercises, be they redistricting or changes to voting procedures, such as the elimination of voting sites in minority areas and the imposition of ID requirements designed to keep “those people” from voting.
As in the abortion case, the party hacks on the court have eschewed any partisan motivation on their part. In fact, they went out of their way to say that -who knows, we may uphold the ruling when we finally get around to hearing the case, but of course we have a busy schedule so don’t expect a decision in time for the next election so the state is good to go for now with the racist map. Basically the same sort of stuff they spewed in the abortion case from Texas. As in that case, they’ll wait until a convenient time to uphold the law, a time when they hope they can do so with little public notice.
The decision was 5-4 with Roberts voting with the dissenters. He is the guy, we should all recall, who wrote the decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, because, as he explained, the Act had worked so well that we no longer had to worry about racists depriving people of the right to vote so we might as well declare the pre-clearance provisions in the act unconstitutional. After which, right away, to the surprise of no one, the Southern states immediately began writing legislation designed to disenfranchise minority voters.
My general impression is that Roberts realizes “his” court has lost all credibility and, for that reason, in an attempt to restore the credibility his court never had, he joins the dissenters when it makes no difference. He’d like for us all to believe that the court is not made up of a bunch of partisan hacks, and presumably some in the media, who refuse to believe the obvious, will go along, even though they make no secret of their partisan bent as they attend right wing political events and give partisan speeches and, in at least one case, rule on cases in which their spouse is politically involved. It will be interesting to see if they go so far as to declare Maryland’s map, which favors Democrats, unconstitutional for some reason that doesn’t apply to Republicans.
If the Democrats ever get a working majority in Congress, look for this court to declare everything they do unconstitutional. We sometimes forget that a similar court actually struck down laws trying to abolish child labor. This court will be just as terrible.
The only thing about which I’m somewhat optimistic is the court’s response to Trump’s inevitable attempt to get away with his crimes. They got what they wanted from him and they don’t need him anymore, and if they rule against him they’ll use it as proof that-“So there! See! We’re not partisan!”
But I blather on. We are doomed.
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