The Supreme Court hears arguments in Merrill v. Milligan Tuesday, a redistricting case that will give the conservatives an opportunity to gut the Voting Rights Act even more thoroughly.
At the center of the case is a congressional map, drawn by the Alabama legislature, that packed most of the state’s Black voters into one district even though Black Alabamians comprise 27 percent of state’s voting-age population. The map was challenged by voters and civil rights groups.
Alabama is asking the Court to throw away its traditional tests to identify illegal racial gerrymanders and to replace them with a new framework that would make such vote-dilution cases nearly impossible to prove. The justices in the right-wing majority gave a sign as to their posture on the case when they stayed an unexpected ruling from a lower court panel of judges — dominated by Trump appointees — tossing out the legislature’s map as a likely violation of the VRA and ordering a redraw.
The Supreme Court hears arguments in Merrill v. Milligan Tuesday, a redistricting case that will give the conservatives an opportunity to gut the Voting Rights Act even more thoroughly.
At the center of the case is a congressional map, drawn by the Alabama legislature, that packed most of the state’s Black voters into one district even though Black Alabamians comprise 27 percent of state’s voting-age population. The map was challenged by voters and civil rights groups.
Alabama is asking the Court to throw away its traditional tests to identify illegal racial gerrymanders and to replace them with a new framework that would make such vote-dilution cases nearly impossible to prove. The justices in the right-wing majority gave a sign as to their posture on the case when they stayed an unexpected ruling from a lower court panel of judges — dominated by Trump appointees — tossing out the legislature’s map as a likely violation of the VRA and ordering a redraw.
Is it fair to say, ‘and so it begins…’?
Perhaps the headline should read:
Supreme Court Justices Get Chance To Codify Fascism
Why bother? 6-3, done and dusted.
Save money, time and resources if we just skip the dog-and-pony show.
Sorta hard to get excited by the hearing and oral arguments. We pretty much know already what is coming with this one. “But her emails. She gave speeches to Wall Street too.”
One possible bright spot to all of this is that, as Republicans continue to try to desperately stack the deck in their favor, it becomes more and more obvious to voters what they are doing. These clear attempts at cheating do eventually alienate most voters even though it often takes a lot longer than would seem reasonable for enough people to notice this.
California stands as a really good example of this. Prior to 1992, California was one of the most reliably red states in the US. It was a bastion of conservative ideology for decades but, once conservative ideas started becoming unpopular, the Republicans began trying to stack the deck in their favor in order to stay in power. This further alienated Californians to the point where, outside of the central valley and the North, it’s hard to find many Republicans anywhere in the state anymore.
It may take a few more years but all of these tricks the Republicans are using to stay in power nationally might very well have the same effect as it had in California-- they might shrink to a small minority with very little power for more than a generation as a result of their antics.
We can only hope.