Dem
47
GOP
53
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court killed the last substantive part of the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday, it was outrage from the commentariat. A selection:
Kim Wehle, The Bulwark: "[T]he Court picked a favored outcome then contorted (you might even say gerrymandered) the law to fit it, all while ignoring the history of the post-Civil War Amendments to the Constitution and Congress's unequivocal and overwhelmingly bipartisan goals in passing the Voting Rights Act in the first place. Worse still, the justices are probably not finished disemboweling the country's decades-long legacy of remedying generations of racial injustice."
Josh Marshall, TPM: "It's a good day to return to the question of the Supreme Court's corruption and the necessity of reforming it in order to make democratic self-government possible again in the United States."
Joan Biskupic, CNN: "The decision also marks a defining moment for the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, who declared soon after joining the bench in 2005, 'the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.' Three years ago, the justices by the same 6-3 vote as Wednesday ended racial affirmative action in higher education admissions."
Richard Hasen, Slate: "So what's to be done? The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people; they will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself, a conclusion I had been resisting until the court made this unavoidable."
Civil Rights Movement activist Andrew Young: "The Supreme Court will go to hell."
The recurrent theme, through most of the pieces, is that the Supreme Court is badly broken. This is not a secret to readers of this site; the question is if enough voters will take notice so as to demand some sort of reform. It's certainly possible that we might have reached a turning point. In particular, we think it's safe to guess that many minority voters will notice that they used to have officeholders who looked like them, and now they have officeholders who definitely do not.
Already, some Southern states are getting down to business, and taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by the Court's ruling. Louisiana is now required to redraw its maps. Since that state's primaries were already underway, they could have gotten away with waiting until the next election cycle. But the Republicans who run the Bayou State don't want to wait. So, they have paused the Louisiana primaries until a new map can be implemented.
Meanwhile, over in Florida, the special session of the legislature called by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) approved the new map, which was apparently drawn with an expectation that the Supreme Court would be rewriting the rules. The Florida map is going to be contested in court, because it may violate state law, but for now there are only four blue districts in the Sunshine State.
Mississippi governor Tate Reeves (R) has called a special session of his state's legislature, and Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee are all kicking the idea around. Likely, some states will decide it's too late for 2026, but it will be full speed ahead for 2028. That means that angry voters will really have two opportunities to express their disapproval, and to communicate the lesson that they would like to see changes made at the Supreme Court. (Z)