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Seven years ago, in the middle of many years the dismantling of the Voting Rights ActThe John Roberts Supreme Court heard a case on a slightly different topic: party discrimination. Republican lawmakers from North Carolina had drawn a map of the U.S. House districts that courts, including the supreme court, had found unconstitutional racial ruler under the VRA. So North Carolina lawmakers tried again, this time go out of their way to make it clear that they were trying to reduce Democratically representation, not Black representation.
Gambi worked. Roberts, writing to many, complained that the execution of the rebels was cruel and unjust. “Excessive partisanship in the district is leading to results that seem unfair,” he said he wrote in Rucho v. Common cause. But many nevertheless concluded that the federal courts had no role to play in the police mutiny, because it was a political question. However, Roberts did not want that to be seen as a recommendation: “Our decision does not support excessive partisan violence.”
That was then. A conservative majority decision in Louisiana vs. Callais last week not only tolerates but encourages states to embrace partisan violence as justification for clamping down on majority-Black districts. As politicians deal with the fallout from the decision, Republican-led states in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have all announced plans to try to redraw the maps this week, and South Carolina’s legislature may not be far behind. That mission will be attracting the most brutal party governors they can, hoping to protect the GOP majority in the White House.
This is what Justice Samuel Alito, author of Callis comments, suggests. Dismissing the Court’s previous requirement, which said that mapmakers must consider whether minority voters were numerous and concentrated enough to create their own district, Alito wrote that plaintiffs must provide strong evidence that minority voters were intentionally targeted because of their race. But he also offered a chance to escape, law professor Richard L. Hasen he explains: Even if the state “perhaps could have drawn a map that favors a minority of voters” but did not, “the state can protect itself by (wait for it … ) agreeing to engage in religious violence.” In other words, like scholar Joshua A. Douglas puts itpartisan harassment “has become a complete defense to any claim of racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”
The basic ideology of Callis many are “color blind.” In a 2007 case undermining affirmative action, Roberts articulated the idea: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.” That’s the kind of glib comment that sounds like an argument as long as you don’t think too much about it. But it’s not a coincidence, like my colleague Adam Serwer he wrote last weekthat the earliest advocates of colorblindness were the newly invented segregationists.
In a colorblind system, any discussion of race itself is seen as disrespectful, a political scientist Julia Azari notes. Alito’s opinion quickly states that “major social changes have occurred throughout the country and especially in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.” This is true as far as it goes but it also has a lot of character, erasing both existing differences and the important role that the VRA has played in combating discrimination. (The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared abandoning parts of the VRA because of reduced discrimination to throwing an umbrella in a storm because one is not yet wet.)
Alito acknowledges that Black voters tend to be Southern Democrats, but his adherence to color blindness prevents him from thinking too deeply about why. It’s not a shocking coincidence but the result of Democrats taking up the cause of civil rights, and Republicans being staunch opponents. This makes Alito’s argument that Black Democrats are losing representation because they are Democrats, not because they are Black, irrelevant. “Controlling for bias” when assessing racial violence is erasing the mechanism through which racism operates,” political scientist Jake Grumbach. he writes.
Falling out Callis has a good chance of making the relationship between race and privilege stronger. Black voters have a healthy critique of the Democratic Party, but watching Republican-led governments compete to redraw maps to eliminate Black representation is unlikely to sway them to the GOP. Again, it may not matter: If cartographers are empowered to draw unsympathetic maps that are also racist, the views of Black voters in some areas, particularly the South, will have little electoral significance.
In his 2019 comments in RuchoRoberts characterized his decision to allow partisan gerrymandering as rooted in modesty and restraint about the proper role of the judiciary, despite his dislike of radical maps: “No one can accuse this Court of having a foolish view of reaching its powers. But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of such constitutional authority.” It is surprising, then, that Roberts and his allies had no qualms about scrapping the VRA, a law duly passed and renewed by Congress. Their despondency will create the same kind of fanatical abuse that Roberts claimed to abhor.
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Today’s news
- Iran hit an important oil hub in the United Arab Emirates along with several US warships and commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, according to US Central Command.
- Report from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found that the agency had failed to secure mobile devices used by its intelligence agencyallowing high-risk applications and weak security mechanisms that could expose sensitive information. DHS said it agrees with the recommendations and has begun making changes to strengthen protections at its facilities.
- The Supreme Court suspended the decision of the lower court and nationwide temporary recall of the abortion pill mifepristoneallowing telemedicine to be prescribed and sent to patients while legal challenges continue.
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The Atlantic staff writer Nick Miroff has been named a Pulitzer Prize winner for Beat Reporting. Read some of his stories:
Evening Read
The Cost of ‘Natural’ Femininity
By Andrea Becker
Supposedly, the menstrual cycle is a gift. It is a well designed product. It is a dance of hormonal miracles that cannot be stopped. These are the messages flooding the internet these days, courtesy of lifestyle influencers, abusive moms, so-called hormone trainers, and all sorts of popular entertainers.
The menstrual cycle, according to these same voices, is also an emotional excitement, which is well developed with the help of ordinary products …
The ups and downs of hormones should be valued in part because of ovulation, the supposedly glorious, clear-skinned time that justifies all pain and that one influencer calls women “secret superpower.” Advocates of the “natural” menstrual cycle argue that modern medicine – especially birth control – has robbed women of this gift, and therefore of their true selves. If restoring it comes with drastic mood swings, well, that’s a small price to pay. But in the long run, buying into these myths about emotions and biology may be more costly.
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this magazine.
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