Supreme Court Might (or Might Not) Scrap the Democrat Extremist Doctrine of Court-Mandated Explicitly-Racist Gerrymandering

Back in the 80s, if I remember right, left-wing extremists began demanding that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act be read to require explicitly race-based gerrymandering to create majority-minority districts.

These majority-minority districts just so happened to be Democrat-supermajority districts, and this imposition was placed on the states of the old Confederacy, which just so happen to be Republican states.

Left-wing judges agreed with this idea, naturally, and began demanding that red states gerrymander their congressional districts to always guarantee Democrats of 3-4 bonus seats that they would never, ever have in a normal partisan gerrymander. While the blue states worked relentlessly to eliminate all Republican-leaning districts, or to pack all Republicans into just one or two districts to make sure every other district was Democrat-majority, Republicans have been forced by left-wing judges to always carve out special Democrats-Only districts.

The state of Louisiana just carved out not one but two strangely-shaped districts to make two seats that only Democrats (specifically, black Democrats) could win. Louisiana citizens sued, claiming -- correctly -- that these districts were drawn on racist grounds and therefore were a violation of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in this case yesterday, and the liberal media is worried that the Supreme Court may remove the apparently-permanent demand that Republican states always carve out DEI districts for Democrats.

I'm less excited, myself. I do not believe that Roberts and the disastrous Amy Coney-Barrett will take the "controversial" step of upholding the Constitution's demand of racial blindness and equality.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority appears to be on the verge of weakening the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights era law that protects racial minorities' voting power.

Note the way that put that -- it protects minorities' voting power. Not their votes -- they can vote, could vote, and will continue to vote.

No, this section has been re-interpreted to mean not just that their votes are protected, but that they are guaranteed to win by racially-gerrymandering districts that racial minority Democrats just can't lose under any circumstances.

During oral arguments Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, several conservative justices signaled outright hostility toward the longstanding interpretation of Section 2 of the 1965 law -- which broadly prohibits discrimination in voting practices on the basis of race or creed.

Decades of legal precedents have, in practice, directed states and federal courts to ensure that legislative district maps contain some districts where minority voters make up at least half the population. The rationale is to prevent "dilution" of minorities' voting power and ensure that communities of Black, Latino or Asian voters can elect their preferred candidates.

But Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch appeared inclined to bar virtually any use of race in redistricting. They suggested that race-conscious district lines might be unconstitutional.

And Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose vote will likely be pivotal in the case, repeatedly suggested that race-based remedies under the Voting Rights Act should be permitted only "for a limited period of time."

"They should have an end point," Kavanaugh said during the oral arguments, which stretched for about two and a half hours.

Kavanaugh's desire for a time limit resembled the Supreme Court's treatment of affirmative action in higher education. Two years ago, the six-justice conservative majority overturned decades of prior precedents and struck down race-conscious admissions policies, in part because the court found that racial dynamics in society have evolved.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the other key votes, asked questions of both sides but were harder to read.

I can read them. They're cowards who crave establishment approval.

Meanwhile, as usual, there is absolutely no question which way the "independent" liberals are voting.

...

Many observers were closely watching Roberts. The chief justice has often voted to curtail the Voting Rights Act in other contexts, including in a landmark 2013 decision that he authored. But in a 2023 case out of Alabama, Roberts (and Kavanaugh) combined with the liberal justices to maintain Section 2 of the law.

...

Gorsuch, for his part, sent a strong signal about how he views the use of race in drawing district maps, even when the stated purpose of using race is to remedy prior discrimination. That practice, Gorsuch said repeatedly, amounts to "intentional" racial discrimination.

As I said, I expect Roberts and Coney-Barrett to side, as usual, with the liberals. I also think that Kavanaugh is weak (and frankly, I wish we'd abandoned him when he was falsely accused of rape) and I expect him to join the liberals as well, though with the proviso that Seriously You Guys, At Some Unspecified Date Decades in the Future, You Must Stop Discriminating Against Whites Like the Constitution Requires, But It's Okay for Now Because It's Not Permanent.

Still, I suppose it's possible they strike down this particular erroneous judge-made rule.

The left is freaking out because, all told, this explicitly-racist practice of the courts has granted the Democrats nineteen guaranteed congressional districts in the red states that they will lose if the Supreme Court scraps the practice.

And I mean "possibly lose in the next year" -- Ron DeSantis, for example, has promised he will immediately began drawing up a new congressional map for Florida the moment the Supreme Court allows him to.

Democratic voting rights groups are preparing for a nightmare scenario if the Supreme Court guts a key part of the landmark civil rights-era legislation, the Voting Rights Act -- a very real possibility this term.

Ahead of the court's Oct. 15 rehearing of Louisiana v. Callais -- a case that has major implications for the VRA -- two voting rights groups are sounding the alarm, warning that eliminating Section 2, a provision that prohibits racial gerrymandering when it dilutes minority voting power, would let Republicans redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party and crush minority representation in Congress.

That calculation, made in a new report from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund shared exclusively with POLITICO, would all but guarantee Republican control of Congress.

While a ruling in time for next year's midterms is unlikely, the organizations behind the report said that it's not out of the question. Taken together, the groups identified 27 total seats that Republicans could redistrict in their favor ahead of the midterms -- 19 of which stem from Section 2 being overturned.

Doing so would "clear the path for a one-party system where power serves the powerful and silences the people," Black Voters Matter Fund co-founder LaTosha Brown said in a statement.

LaTosha, you keep talking that sexy talk.

Without Section 2, up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus and 11 percent of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus could be drawn out of their seats, according to the report.

From Greg Foreman: MSNBC is boohoo whinin' and cryin' about this, with Rachel Maddow turning me on for the first time ever by promising "all-white rule."

Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division is supporting the effort to overturn this noxious racist "rule." She posted the Division's brief.

The Genius Ketanji Brown-Jackson argued that blacks are just like disabled people and must be protected forever just as the Americans with Disabilities Act protects retards.

Cry moar:

Happy Thursday, Gentlemen and Female Gentlemen!

It's a great day in America! What are you going to do with your day?!

posted by Ace at 12:12 PM

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