In law school I revered the Supreme Court Justices loyalty to the Constitution and the model of the government they built us. No more. Today’s Supreme Court has trashed the Constitution to sabotage the right of Democrats to vote.
Everything would point a midterm Democratic majority in the House of Representatives unless Republican state legislatures and the Supreme Court continue to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
Voters in each Congressional District elect a candidate to the House of Representatives. Congressional Districts are determined by District maps drawn by state legislatures that often favor the candidate of their party – a practice known a gerrymandering.
President Trump, fearing that Republicans will lose the House majority, asked the Texas state legislature to add five more Republican Districts by gerrymandering, i.e., redrawing the states District map to dilute or eliminate the number of voters in Democratic Districts.
Other Republican-led states are likely to follow with Democratics trying to catch up. But they’ll have a hard time, given that Republican state legislatures control redistricting in 21 states with a total of 193 Congressional Districts, while Democratic state legislatures control redistricting in 7 states with 49 Congressional Districts.
Sadly, Republicans will sail through the Supreme Court’s pro-Trump majority, even when Republicans violate the 15th Amendment by “deny or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”
In Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP the pro-Trump majority upheld the South Carolina Republicans’ legislature removal of 60% of Black voters from their Congressional District into a White-denominated District to ensure the election of the Republican candidate. The same majority, minus Barrett, previously held in Rucho. v. Common Cause that political gerrymandering is not the business of federal courts. The combination of these two rulings allows racial gerrymandering
because racial gerrymandering is always done to win elections.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee Trump’s majority held that Arizona’s voting restrictions that allowed the tossing ballots that didn’t comply with the restrictions didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and 15th Amendment prohibitions against denying or abridging the right to vote based on race or color. Although Chief Justice Roberts admitted that Arizona’s restrictions fell more heavily on Native American minorities, he hedged by claiming that the number of ballots tossed would be immaterial to the outcome of the election, even though they exceeded the margins of victory in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Although I didn’t like the result, I struggled to find a way to justify the holding based on a rational analysis of the 15th Amendment and the VRA but failed.
There is however a reasonable expectation that the number of Supreme Court Justices could be increased to minimize the influence of politics and blatant bias on the court. Most Americans support the increase because they doubt that the Supreme Court is fair or adheres to the Constitution in making decisions affecting elections and are alarmed – even panic stricken — at Trump’s extreme behavior.
But I know that expanding the Court can’t happen while Trump’s obedient Republicans are in control. Ironically, though, it’s the Republicans’ enabling of Trump’s treachery, including their confirming the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet in American history and their willingness to endanger Americans’ health and dominant global role, that’s likely to be the catalyst for losing their seats to Republicans who are not Trump’s puppets or to Democrats.
Once Republicans realize that they are more likely to lose their seats because of the treachery they enabled than because of their disobedience to Trump, they’ll desperately and aggressively turn against Trump. And even if they don’t impeach and convict him, they can override his veto of legislation that expands the Supreme Court and refuse to confirm his nominees until they get the right ones.
