And another brick in our Democracy falls (okay, was pushed)

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. It was a legal law and stood for 55 + years. Almost a decade ago, one provision was overturned. That was a provision saying that  certain states, and a few counties had routinely disadvantaged minorities of the vote. Since the law had worked to date, the Supreme Court overturned the pre-clearance section.

Stock Photo by Photocreo

No surprise, those district and states that had previously been monitored immediately set out changing laws to make it harder for minorities to vote. So the ruling was all bullshit - based on good behavior that was required by the law. It is like making counterfeiting legal, since counterfeiting had ended. So yeah, that results was bad.

But Article 2, and other parts of the Voting Rights Act, stayed in place. That included making it illegal to gerrymander minorities voters to disenfranchise them. Well Alabama did just that torturing the maps to squeeze the 27% black voters into 1 district and then splitting the rest of the black residents into the other 5 districts that are overwhelmingly white and Republican. That still requires some states to submit their redistricting plan to a 3 judge review board.

The districts were ruled illegal by purposefully cramming the black votes into 1 district and diluting every other black residents vote by the Federal review court of 3 judges, with two of them Trump Judges. These judges detailed out their reasoning in refusing to certify the districts in a 251 page ruling. So The Court ordered the legislature to set out new districts ASAP, before the May primary. (Note: All states are redistricting based on the 23020 census.)

It was appealed and in an unwritten night decision that WAS NOT ARGUED was overruled (called the Shadow Docket because it cannot be challenged and no one argues it. So the Supreme Court agreed to review it next year. BUT, it stayed the current ruling so the districts can be used THIS year. And, once a district has been set, courts are loathed to change them during the decade. 

So the Supreme Court fucked black voters. And the decisions was so unsavory that Judge John Roberts - one of the architects of overturning the Voting Rights Act - dissent and voted with the 3 liberals.

So yeah, our Supreme Court is a bunch of partisan hacks.

Just to remind you, Alabama was the State where a black man was murdered for jogging, and 2 DAs refused to prosecute the case.