The Supreme Court’s six-to-three Republican-appointed majority issued a staggering ruling on Wednesday essentially killing the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act, dealing a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights law. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Louisiana v. Callais strikes down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana and in so doing narrows Section 2 of the VRA to the point of irrelevance, making it nearly impossible to prove that a gerrymandered map violates the right of voters of color.
“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”
The supreme court is an illegitimate institution that regularly declares itself arbiter of things it has no business in. It has effectively become first among “equals” in a government of increasingly questionable legitimacy. Doesn’t matter whether they do something “good” or “bad” we shouldn’t view them as having any legitimate authority in the first place – Certainly not in elections.
Today they have a voice in gerrymandering. Tomorrow? Will they declare lottery elections illegitimate? More Money is speech nonsense? Can’t Tax political donations? Can’t tax political advertising? There are ways to make the government legitimate and give it consent of the governed – but we cannot allow corrupt oligarchs to tell us what is and isn’t legitimate.