The Supreme Court Could Bury What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

I could also be overly cynical about our present, fastidiously manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court docket, however I am not optimistic about the outcome of this improvement. From The New York Instances:

The district, anchored in Charleston, had elected a Republican yearly since 1980, aside from 2018. However the 2020 race was shut, with lower than one proportion level separating the candidates, and Republican lawmakers “sought to create a stronger Republican tilt” within the district after the 2020 census, the panel wrote. The lawmakers achieved that aim, the panel discovered, partially by the “bleaching of African American voters out of the Charleston County portion of Congressional District No. 1.” The brand new Home map moved 62 % of Black voters in Charleston County from the First District to the Sixth District, a seat that Consultant James E. Clyburn, a Black Democrat, has held for 30 years.

So the Roberts Court docket, which declared the Day of Jubilee in Shelby County, and which declared political gerrymandering past its mandate in Rucho, has determined to tackle a case of racial gerrymandering, which would appear to those drained, inexpert eyes as a possibility for this specific Supreme Court docket to train all its worst instincts without delay. Additional, if it decides in favor of the Republicans within the South Carolina legislature, it might bury what little is left of the Voting Rights Act, and that may be a temptation that ought to have been avoided Chief Justice Roberts in any respect prices.

The brand new Home map moved 62 % of Black voters in Charleston County from the First District to the Sixth District, a seat that Consultant James E. Clyburn, a Black Democrat, has held for 30 years.

Apparently, the congressional district in query is the one belonging to Rep. Nancy Mace, who masquerades as a reasonable Republican often with out ever doing very a lot past operating her mouth. And people legislators from the house workplace of American sedition are main the best way in their very own conventional style.

Republican lawmakers acknowledged that that they had redrawn the First District for partisan achieve. However they stated that they had not thought-about race within the course of.

After all not. Why would anybody presume that about politicians from South Caroli….I will are available in once more.

Charles P Pierce is the writer of 4 books, most lately Fool America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives close to Boston and has three youngsters.