The arrogant activist conservative Supreme Court majority demolished your right to vote today, and it now it is time to get angry.
By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines the conservative majority of the Supreme Court legislated from the bench, and gutted a key piece of the Voting Rights Act.
The decision was a hypocritical contradiction of the court’s own previous behavior.
This quote from Justice Ginsburg’s dissent sums up the conservative majority’s hypocrisy:
The Court suggests that limiting the jurisdictional scope of the VRA in an appropriate case would be “to try our hand at updating the statute.” Ante, at 22. Just last Term, however, the Court rejected this very argument when addressing a materially identical severability provision, explaining that such a provision is”Congress’ explicit textual instruction to leave unaffected the remainder of [the Act]” if any particular “application is unconstitutional.” National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. __, __ (2012) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 56) (internal quotation marks omitted); id., at __ (GINSBURG, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part) (slip op.,at 60) (agreeing with the plurality’s severability analysis). See also Raines, 362 U. S., at 23 (a statute capable of some constitutional applications may nonetheless be susceptible to a facial challenge only in “that rarest of cases where this Court can justifiably think itself able confidently to discern that Congress would not have desired its legislation to stand at all unless it could validly stand in its every application”). Leaping to resolve Shelby County’s facial challenge without considering whether application of the VRA to Shelby County is constitutional, or even addressing the VRA’s severability provision, the Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decisionmaking. Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA.
Republicans claim to hate activist judges who legislative from the bench, but what the conservative majority did today was throw out the entire legislative history of the Voting Rights Act in order to justify an illogical and hypocritical decision that is intended to a Republican electoral advantage. In short, a majority on the Supreme Court just legalized the Republican attack on voting rights.
The conservatives used the success of the Sec. 4 of the Voting Rights Act as their justification for killing it. Their reasoning was deeply flawed, and their motives were laughably transparent. This was the conservative justices’ attempt to put a Republican back in the White House. Through this decision, they opened the door to all sorts of voter suppression laws that will largely target two key pieces of the new Democratic coalition that has grown up during the Obama years, Hispanics and African Americans.
The next wave of voter suppression will also target students and the poor. It also will target Democratic voters in urban areas. In short, the Supreme Court has given the Republican Party the green light to declare all out war on Democratic voters.
The majority on this court apparently wants to return to the battles of civil rights era, and with Congress paralyzed by Republican incompetence, the remedy is to fight. Instead of signing an Internet petition, really get involved. Tell your friends and family about what has happened today. Pick up the phone, or write a letter by hand urging your member of Congress to protect your right to vote.
It is going take even more than that. You may have to willing to join a protest. Are you willing to stand up and speak out, or are you going to let 5 men with a political agenda allow Republicans to disenfranchise you?
Get angry, get involved, and be prepared to fight for your right to vote.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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