Reprinted from progressive.org
The Supreme Court is turning back the clock on election law.
If I asked you to name the most important opinion handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court during Earl Warren's sixteen-year tenure (1953-69) as Chief Justice, you'd probably cite Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark, unanimous ruling that ended legal segregation in public schools.
Voter suppression techniques in GOP-controlled states have proliferated at a rate not seen since the Jim Crow era.
Warren himself was asked this exact question in a televised interview with the McClatchy News Service that aired on June 25, 1969, two days after he formally stepped down from the bench. Without understating the importance of Brown, he singled out Baker v. Carr, the 1962 decision on reapportionment, redistricting, and gerrymandering that established the doctrine of "one person, one vote."
As Warren explained:
"I think the reapportionment not only of state legislatures but of representative government in this country is perhaps the most important issue we've had before the Supreme Court.
"If everyone in this country has an opportunity to participate in his government on equal terms with everyone else, and can share in electing representatives who will be truly representative of the entire community and not some special interest, then most of the problems that we are confronted with would be solved through the political process rather than through the courts."
Four years after deciding Baker, the court issued another pivotal decision in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, upholding the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Flash forward to the present day, and the Supreme Court has shifted on its axis. Now dominated by conservatives, including three hard-right members nominated by President Donald Trump, the court appears determined to turn back the clock on election law to the early 1950s and undo the last vestiges of Warren's voting rights legacy.
The court's latest act of electoral sabotage came in a 5-4 ruling, issued on February 7, that reinstated a new Alabama Congressional map created after the 2020 census for the state's seven seats in the House of Representatives. Chief Justice John Roberts, the architect of much of the court's recent voting rights carnage, was so disturbed by the majority's decision that he joined the court's three Democratic appointees in dissent.
In January, a three-judge federal district court panel overturned the Alabama map as an illegal "racial gerrymander" in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The section prohibits voting practices and procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a minority language group. Private parties as well as the federal government can file civil lawsuits to enforce the act.
The new map was challenged by the Alabama chapter of the NAACP and other plaintiffs, who noted that while Black people comprise 27 percent of the state's residents, the map concentrated one-third of Black residents into a single voting district. The net effect was to create one Black majority voting district while dispersing the rest of the Black population across the state.
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