Section V VRA shelby
dismabig
4 26 3rd leg of stool gone alito
mma
04/30/26
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// an 10 25
In an article for MSNBC published Wednesday, legal analyst Jordan Rubin argued that conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is driving a dangerous effort to limit voting rights, based on what Rubin calls an “unfounded insistence” that race-based remedies must have an expiration date.
Rubin warned that Kavanaugh’s position, voiced during oral arguments in a major voting rights case out of Louisiana on Wednesday, could pave the way for the Court to further dismantle the Voting Rights Act.
"The Supreme Court is on the verge of further limiting voting rights, thanks in part to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s unfounded insistence that considering race can only be legal for a certain amount of time into the future — regardless of what the law and the Constitution say,” he wrote.
At issue is whether the state’s congressional map, which includes a second majority-Black district, violates constitutional protections against race discrimination.
But Kavanaugh steered the hearing into broader ideological territory by pressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund attorney, Janai Nelson, on when race-conscious remedies should end — a question not rooted in the actual text of the law or Constitution, Rubin noted.
Nelson responded that there is no legal time limit, emphasizing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — currently under scrutiny — targets current, provable racial discrimination in voting. That provision has become especially vital since the Court’s 2013 decision, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, which effectively dismantled another key part of the Act.
Kavanaugh first introduced his “time limit” theory in a 2023 case from Alabama, where he and Roberts joined liberal justices in a surprising 5-4 vote upholding a Section 2 claim.
However, Rubin noted that Kavanaugh signaled then that he might not support such remedies indefinitely, writing that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
Now, Rubin argues, that theory is no longer theoretical.
With the Court’s conservative majority expressing discomfort with race-based considerations, even when aimed at remedying discrimination, Rubin sees the Louisiana case as a potential turning point.
If the Court rules in favor of the state, it could sharply curtail Section 2’s power, a result Nelson called “pretty catastrophic.”
Rubin concluded that abandoning race-conscious remedies not only misreads the law but ignores the ongoing racial realities they were designed to address.
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doj sued illegal alien BS
msnbc 10 24
two states dumping sweater vest gov youngkin if discrepnancy in dmv recs; only possible b/c scotus gutted voting rts act which req pre-clearance of fuckery
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an 920
US Civil Rights Commission shelves recommendations for protecting voter rights in November
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how much overturned by bill?
no lnx
Just one Republican breaks ranks to join the Democrats in passing new Voting Rights Advancement Act
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams December 6, 2019
Just one Republican—Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—joined a united House Democratic caucus on Friday to pass what rights groups hailed as “historic” legislation to restore and expand voter protections that were gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen, said passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) is a “critical step” in combating Republican voter suppression efforts that have proliferated in the six years since the Supreme Court’s infamous decision inShelby County v. Holder.
“Numerous state legislatures have undertaken targeted and deliberate steps to limit or impede the right to vote for communities of color, students, the elderly, and people with disabilities,” said Gilbert. “Americans who are eligible to vote but are denied that right due to fabricated or illegal barriers are being deprived of the full privilege of our democracy.”
BREAKING: The House just passed #HR4, one of the most important bills to emerge during this Congress. As voter suppression continues to spread across the US, this bill would breathe life back into the Voting Rights Act. A win for the people & a win for democracy! #RestoreTheVote pic.twitter.com/TR14b3ltxQ
— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) December 6, 2019
BREAKING: @RepBrianFitz is the one and only House Republican that believes in voting rights. https://t.co/37aqHMYIMO
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 6, 2019
“If we want a true democracy, we must protect the right to vote for all,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “The Voting Rights Advancement Act is critical to getting there.”
The legislation now heads to the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to allow a vote on Democrats’ For the People Act (H.R. 1), to which the Voting Rights Advancement Act was previously attached.
As Ari Berman of Mother Jones reported, H.R. 4—sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.)—would “initially cover 11 states: nine in the South, plus California and New York, which have more recently been found to discriminate against Latinos and Asian Americans.”
“The bill would also require all states to get federal approval for election changes that are known to disproportionately affect voters of color, such as strict voter ID laws, tighter voter registration requirements, and polling place closures in areas with large numbers of minority voters,” Berman noted.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, applauded the House for passing H.R. 4 and demanded that McConnell bring the bill up for a vote in the Senate as soon as possible.
“The passage of H.R. 4 in the House of Representatives today brings us one step closer to restoring the Voting Rights Act and undoing the tremendous damage of Shelby,” Gupta said in a statement. “The VRAA is too important—and the right to vote is too fundamental—to end up buried in the McConnell legislative graveyard.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court may roll back two pillars of the civil rights era this term -- the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and affirmative action -- both of which have long been targeted by the right-wing and whose challenges are backed by the same set of deep-pocketed ideological funders.
Scalia Sees Voting Rights and Affirmative Action as "Racial Entitlements"
Wednesday's oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder indicated hostility among some justices towards Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which requires states with a history of state-sanctioned racial discrimination to get federal pre-approval before implementing changes to their voting laws or procedures. Congress has renewed it four times since 1965 with significant bipartisan support, most recently in 2006, when every U.S. Senator voted for it.
But that support was "very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement," Justice Antonin Scalia asserted from the bench. "Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes," he said, a characterization of the landmark civil rights law that was met with gasps in the courtroom.
This is not the first time Scalia has talked about "racial entitlements"-- and his perspective will almost certainly apply to another civil rights case in the Court's docket this term.
"To pursue the concept of racial entitlement -- even for the most admirable and benign of purposes -- is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred," he wrote [3] about affirmative action in a concurring opinion in the 1995 case Adarand Constructors v Pena, a decision that enacted a high bar for government affirmative action programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts has expressed similar support for so-called color-blindness under the law. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," he wrote [4] in a 2007 case striking down the consideration of a student's race by school districts striving for diversity in schools in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. Likewise, in a 2009 decision about the VRA, Roberts expressed a view that race matters less today, and therefore Section 5's federal pre-clearance requirement may no longer be justified since "things have changed in the South."
Roberts and Scalia have another bite at the affirmative action apple this term. In October, the Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v University of Texas, which challenges race-conscious university admission policies. Questioning from Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia indicated the Court may have a five-justice majority to reverse parts of a 2003 ruling that allowed consideration of race in college admissions (a decision that came before President George W Bush named two justices to the court).
The statements from these justices on affirmative action and voting rights reflect a view that race plays little role in America today (! [5]), or at least that it should no longer be acknowledged under the law. In fact, "explicit anti-black attitudes" have actually increased [6] over the past four years, particularly among Republicans, according to research by social scientists at Brown and the University of Michigan.
If the Court sides with plaintiffs in Fisher and Shelby County, it would be a victory for the right, which for decades has been laying the groundwork for rolling-back these sorts of progressive gains by adopting the terminology of "color-blindness."
Long-Standing Opposition to Affirmative Action, Section 5
Both the VRA and affirmative action grew out of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, and have been targeted for reversal ever since by generations of reactionaries.
President Lyndon Johnson's support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to realignments within America's two major political parties. Southern Democrats like "Dixiecrat" Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina defected to the Republican Party, and over time many voters who had long supported "the Party of Lincoln" shifted their allegiance to Democrats.
Ronald Reagan's opposition to civil rights programs, for example, was a key part of his effort to win the presidency by appealing to the racial views of white Southern voters. He famously kicked-off his successful presidential bid by declaring his support for "state's rights" at a Mississippi event held just a few miles from where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964. "States rights" had been a rallying call for Southern states opposing Brown v. Board of Education and the end of racial segregation, and provided a facially neutral way to oppose the VRA's Section 5 federal pre-clearance requirements. He called the VRA "humiliating to the South" and described affirmative action as a form of "reverse discrimination" where whites are "victims." As legendary campaign consultant Lee Atwater acknowledged [7] after the campaign, the way Reagan discussed voting rights and affirmative action was part of a careful effort to garner the votes of white Southerners by using "abstract" and coded language to avoid express racism.
Once elected, Reagan stopped enforcing several affirmative action programs, and his Justice Department began filing amicus briefs in support of white men claiming injury from the programs. In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, John Roberts was working for the Reagan Administration and argued for [8] a watered-down version of the law. After Congress rejected the administration's efforts and passed a strengthened VRA with bipartisan support, a hesitant Reagan nonetheless signed the reauthorization -- prompting Roberts to write [9] "we were burned." President Reagan also appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justices who passed the litmus tests of a narrow view of affirmative action and civil rights laws: Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, who are still on the Court, as well as William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Right-Wing Institutions Laid Groundwork
Part of the long-term success of modern Republicanism, which grew out of opposition to the civil rights gains of the 1960s, is attributable to the development of a network of right-wing funders and well-funded institutions starting in the mid-1970s. For example, in 1973, legendary right-wing activist Paul Weyrich co-founded both the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heritage Foundation....
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