The Guardian - A devastating blow': NAACP says supreme court ruling is 'a major setback for our nation' Meanwhile, Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said the high court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais delivers “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act”.
The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” Johnson said in a statement today.
He went on:
"The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for. But the people still can fight back. Our democracy is crying for help."
Louisiana’s legal saga thrust the state into the center of conservatives’ push to weaken a central provision of the 1965 law that has long enabled advocacy groups to force new majority-minority districts.
The decision does not strike down the provision entirely. Justice Samuel Alito cast it as an “update” to the framework that has governed Voting Rights Act cases for decades, saying lower courts had stretched it too far.
And under that proper framework, Alito agreed the Constitution does not tolerate Louisiana’s new majority-Black district, which the state intentionally added after a lower court ruled a design with only one violated the landmark law.
“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights,” Alito wrote.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents election practices that deny equal access to the political process based on race.
For decades, groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed Section 2 lawsuits to prompt states to redraw their maps with new boundaries that boost minority voting power.
The Supreme Court’s decision claws back their ability to do so by limiting court-ordered redistricting that intentionally uses race as a factor.
The Hill - The Supreme Court’s liberal justices called their colleagues’ decision clawing back race-based redistricting on Wednesday a “now-completed demolition” of the Voting Rights Act. In a 48-page dissent, Justice Elena Kagan held up the landmark 1965 law as helpful to the nation’s progress on racial discrimination.
“At this last stage, the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril,” Kagan wrote. “I dissent because Congress elected otherwise,” she continued. “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”
She read her dissent aloud from the bench, a rare move the justices reserve for when they want to express their strong disagreements in a case.
Kagan’s opinion was joined by her two fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. It came as the Supreme Court declared Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines stands to claw back advocacy groups’ ability to force new districts over claims that minority voting power is being diluted.
As Justice Samuel Alito cast the conservative majority’s decision as merely an “update” to the Voting Rights Act framework that would ensure judges don’t stretch the law too far, Kagan said he was understating the impact. “Even antiseptic,” she wrote.
No comments:
Post a Comment