The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Ruling Is Results-Driven Cynicism, Not Law
from the just-garden-variety-racism dept
I will continue to make the case for a 100 Justice Supreme Court because we need to get to the point that no single Supreme Court Justice matters. As it stands, each individual Justice has way too much power, and when they go mad with it, they can undermine the very structure of democracy. And while I’m sure some people will insist this is sour grapes about cases not going the way I want, it’s not that. I can accept rulings I disagree with, where I can see and understand the Constitutional logic behind them. For example, while I agree that the post-Citizens United change in campaign finance has been disastrous and needs to be fixed, I think the actual ruling in that case is not just defensible, but correct on the law (i.e. I think the fixes to campaign finance should come from elsewhere, not from getting rid of that ruling).
Similarly, while the underlying hatred and bigotry animating the decisions in 303 Creative and Chiles v. Salazar are deeply problematic, the actual rulings make some level of Constitutional sense on First Amendment grounds.
But the Roberts Court keeps handing down rulings that have no basis in any actual Constitutional principles, and are instead very clearly ideological and results-driven approaches to deciding cases. The Dobbs decision on abortion, most famously, but also (obviously) Trump v. US in which the Supreme Court effectively ruled that Trump could violate any law he wanted while President. And now we can add to that Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively brings back Jim Crow segregation and turns the Fifteenth Amendment into a dead letter.
If you want deeper analysis on just how fucked up this ruling is, I’ll point you to voting law expert Rick Hasen’s writeup in Slate, where he calls it “the worst ruling in a century.” But even more useful is his follow-up piece on just how cowardly Alito’s reasoning is:
In Callais, Alito purported to overturn no precedent, claiming he was merely “updating” a framework that the Supreme Court constructed in the 1986 Thornburg v. Gingles case to determine when a redistricting plan violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority representation. This follows his 2021 majority opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, where he purported to provide mere “guidelines” for determining when a state violates Section 2 in passing a law related to voting or voter registration.
In both cases, however, Justice Alito made it impossible for plaintiffs to win their cases, leaving Section 2 on the books, but essentially toothless. Since Brnovich, as I showed in a recent law review article, no plaintiffs have brought successful suits under Section 2 challenging a law alleged to suppress votes. Justice Elena Kagan’s exasperated dissent in Callais cited this research and rightly predicted the same fate for redistricting claims under Section 2: “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”
But I want to focus on something a bit different, which is just how hypocritical many of the recent decisions are. The supposedly “conservative” Justices contradict themselves over and over again to reach the motivated result they are seeking. We’ve already seen some of this in other rulings, such as when the court decided that nationwide injunctions by district courts were bad… but only when they were used against Trump (after blessing many against Biden).
In Callais we see more of the same. Remember, just two years ago in the Loper Bright case, this same Supreme Court pretended to stand on principle against the administrative state by arguing that the executive branch had way less power than it had previously suggested in its old Chevron case, arguing that the power of Congress to define things rather than delegate decisions is key. Well, the Fifteenth Amendment explicitly says that “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” in order to make sure that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race….”
So in one case it’s left for Congress to legislate to clarify governmental power, and in the other Justice Alito and the other conservatives on the Court have decided they can take that Constitutionally granted power away from Congress — not based on any actual Constitutional reason, but because they’ve concluded that racism is over. That’s literally the crux of Alito’s argument, in which he notes that:
By 2004, the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.
Of course, this is both highly misleading and beside the point of what the Constitution actually says in the Fifteenth Amendment, which gives that power to Congress to decide. It’s misleading because he cherry-picked “two of the five most recent” elections to obscure the fact that it wasn’t true in the last three — elections that occurred only after the Court had already hollowed out the rest of the Voting Rights Act.
As we discussed last year in the Texas redistricting case, the Supreme Court has made it clear in previous rulings that it’s totally legal to gerrymander for partisan reasons, just so-long as it’s not explicitly for racial reasons. The problem in Texas was that its legislature had initially rejected the (already flimsy and obviously pretextual) partisan reasons for redistricting until the Trump DOJ threatened them over the racial makeup of districts, leading to the last minute decision to redistrict, solely in response to the warning about the racial makeup of districts from the Trump admin. The lower court (in a ruling issued by a Trump appointed judge) found that to be a violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
But, bizarrely, this Supreme Court also tossed out that ruling on the shadow docket (naturally) in December, claiming it had to do this because it was too close to the election in Texas to toss out the redistricted maps… even though the election was many months away and the “redistricted” maps had only been created a few months earlier. Literally none of it made sense. That ruling was just a stay to allow the redistricted maps for the 2026 midterm elections, but the case technically continued over whether or not there could be an injunction against the maps.
In an absolutely bizarre ruling on Monday (right before this Callais ruling) the Supreme Court effectively further rejected the challenge to Texas’ redistricting by simply citing its original shadow docket ruling, even though (1) the issue before the court now is different and (2) that original shadow docket ruling was based on no significant briefing or oral arguments. Court watcher (and shadow docket coiner/criticizer) Steve Vladeck notes that this is a dangerous power grab by the court:
I can’t remember a prior case with this kind of (true) summary reversal—where the Court just reversed a three-judge district court on the merits without any detailed explanation.
The original (already questionable) order was procedural, and apparently deemed necessary due to the “emergency” nature of an election that wasn’t happening for months and for which there was plenty of time to adjust. But to then claim to rule on the merits of the case by simply pointing back to that other emergency ruling, without more detailed briefing and without explanation, is bizarre.
But remember: the stated basis for the December ruling was the supposedly imminent 2026 midterm primaries. And then look at what happened in Louisiana after the Callais decision, where Governor Jeff Landry literally declared a “state of emergency” to suspend the already ongoing primary election in order to initiate redistricting, based on the Callais ruling.
So if you’re playing along at home, in Texas they redrew the Congressional maps in August of 2025 for blatantly racial reasons (as called out by a Trump-appointed judge in November, who provided a ton of evidence). In December of 2025, the Supreme Court said that those racially-biased new districts had to stay because it was too close to the 2026 midterms (which were still months away) to try to redistrict (despite the ability to easily go back to the pre-August districts which were the existing districts). But now, in late April, based on this new Supreme Court ruling, Louisiana can magically stop elections in which voting has already occurred in order to redistrict to create more racist gerrymandering.
And all this because Alito and Roberts are happy to literally ignore the Fifteenth Amendment when they don’t like the results.
That is what results-driven judicial decision-making looks like. And it’s why the court is viewed as increasingly illegitimate across the board.
I can live with the Court issuing principled rulings I disagree with. But here there are no principles on display beyond “we’re racist and we want to deprive non-white people of their vote.” The Supreme Court makes it clear that it is illegitimate with such a move, and not worthy of any respect at all.
And that won’t change until we get real reform, such as by shifting the Court so that no single Justice (or small clique of Justices) has so much power.
Filed Under: 14th amendment, 15th amendment, callais, constitution, discrimination, john roberts, louisiana, motivated reasoning, racism, samuel alito, supreme court, voting rights, voting rights act
Comments on “The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Ruling Is Results-Driven Cynicism, Not Law”
In the hands of this “Supreme” Court the Purcell rule has become whatever hurts Republican within a year of election is banned, what hurts Democrats is legal.
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Because you don’t like actual rule of law, don’t understand the law, and most importantly don’t like any nitpicking things like “constitutionality” getting in the way of you getting what you want.
Btw, this is a far left very radical position, so it really tickles me when you call yourself a “moderate”. For what? Thinking capitalism should still exist? A little? What a fuucking loon.
I don’t think Alito “purported” that, at all, but this was definitely absolutely overturning a previous bad precedent.. Just helping you out, since you seem confused, and are trying to suggest otherwise through a third party quote with no basis in fact.
The 1986 decision was just made up nonsense (kinda like Roe) demanding things the text of the law did not demand, and doing so in direct conflict with the constitution. It said, essentially, that you have to be racist to combat racism. Not only is that stupid, legally indefensible, it doesn’t even work.
Odd way to say absolutely predictable based on law.
The constitutional basis, since you seem confused, as laid down in the 14th and 15th amendments, is that you can’t discriminate based on race, you ffffing moron.
Yeah buddy, “Appropriate legislation” does not include being fuccking racist. (which the original VRA did not ask for, but the 1986 precedent did)
What you want is to be allowed to be racist. You want to draw districts, to discriminate, based on race. (y’know, directly against what the 14th and 15th say) This probably has less to do with wanting to support black people (which sure as hell doesn’t include black conservatives, right?) but rather than you want court-ordered gerrymanders that favor your side in deep red states. That’s it, that’s the whole play.
Well, I don’t think you should get to be racist, and the constitution is very clear that you do not. You DO NOT get to segregate based on race. Louisiana is a deep red state and definitely shouldn’t have 2 blue districts. New Orleans is a natural blue district but if they followed the VA-Spanberger playbook there would be none.
What you want is racism, but it’s not even that you care about the racism, you care that it renders you partisan advantage.
The answer is “fuuck you, no, racism is bad, actually.”
Of course, the irony is you and your little cult will call me racist, nazi, fascist, etc for this, because you think those arguments still have any value, that normies believe you, at all.
But nah, you want racism, I don’t.
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Can you point to where I’ve called myself a “moderate”? Because I don’t believe I ever have. This seems to be, like so many things, something you made up in your head regarding the strawman Mike you only believe exists.
What I have said is that I’m not a leftist. But it’s more that I think political ideology is not a left-right spectrum and people who identify as such tend to be narrow minded fools, and I tend to view things my own way.
Duuuuuuude. He absolutely purported that. He absolutely insisted he wasn’t overturning precedent, even as he clearly was, and you saying he was REVEALS WHY THIS WAS SUCH A BULLSHIT RULING. Because everyone knows he’s overturning precedent but was too chickenshit to admit that.
The Monday decision (not Callais)? No way. Dude. As stated, that one went against basically all SCOTUS history, ruling on the merits in a case without briefing or a hearing… and pointing to a shadow docket ruling on a separate issue as its reasoning? Not at all predictable.
Why does it not surprise me that you don’t understand any of this?
You can’t actually believe that level of bullshit can you? The VRA was to make sure that black votes weren’t ignored. What this ruling does (and what Landry is doing in response) is to MAKE SURE THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE.
You’re a fucking racist and literally everyone knows it. Including yourself
The fact that you can’t admit it publicly shows how you’re not just racist, you’re a chickenshit racist who pretends otherwise.
Fuck off.
Quit projecting. What the VRA and what I want is NON PARTISAN. Literally the only purpose this new ruling creates is to GUARANTEE IT IS PARTISAN.
I think representation should be roughly proportional. That is no partisan gerrymandering at all. You want the reverse. Because you know your cause is historically unpopular, and if faced an actual vote you’d not just lose but would have your racist fascist leaders out of power forever.
Can’t have that, can you?
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And what you want is the same thing—but done in service of whiteness. Most people would be fine with non-partisan maps that take race into account but don’t make that the sole or most important arbiter of how maps are drawn. You, on the other hand, seem just fine with Republicans drawing districts that dilute the voting power of people of color (but especially Black people in the South).
Well…yeah. That’s what you are: a fascist bigot. I mean, you’re on this site every day stumping for a government regime staffed and run by White nationalists, many of whom believe the eradication of all the world’s Jews once they’ve all returned (or been forced into) Israel will bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
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I thought Jews were down in prog stuff too? From the river to the sea? I thought you’d see the eradication of the world’s Jews as a good thing, Mr. Stone!
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For the 2227th time, making shit up is not an argument.
Like maybe, if you call me racist just enough times, you’ll get your way despite logic and law. Oh, no, that hasn’t worked out?
Meanwhile you want to discriminate based on race and I don’t. **Definitionally* you are the racist. I’m not making an argument here, just pointing out a literal fact.
Not a thing, hasn’t been for centuries because of democrats.
I don’t know how you’re not picking this up: that means absolutely nothing coming from you. It LITERALLY just means someone you disagree with.
…odd, since there’s quite a few non-white people and a LOT of jews.
Buddy, YOU SIDE WITH THE “RIVER TO THE SEA” PEOPLE WHO LITERALLY WANT TO KILL ALL THE JEWS, YOU STUPID FUCK.
This is what I mean: You are a stupid, ridiculous person and your words mean literally nothing. You don’t even believe what you’re saying, and you’re not even pausing long enough to try to make it make sense.
Yeah buddy, the best friend Israel has ever had, whose grandchildren are Jewish, who obviously likes and trusts his Jewish son-in-law, THAT guy wants to wipe out all the Jews, obviously.
Meanwhile, the people who cheered about 1200 dead Jews, including children, “they just hate Israel”, not Jews. Yeah right.
It’s always up is down, evil is good, dark is light with you people.
Just STFU you absolutely ridiculous, retarded clown.
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I think they ought to include wealth discrimination, as well.
Therefore, it should be that Poor People Get More Votes.
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yeah, but the moderator rarely permits such bold comments to linger openly here
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Found the pedophile!
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FTFY, gaslighting prick.
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“I’m right because I keep saying everyone else is wrong!” Note that you keep making claims and never provide any citations. Your entire schtick continues to be “trust me, bro.” If you were actually right, you could provide citations. If you actually cared that others weren’t right, you’d attempt to educate rather than to attack. But you’re not here to educate. You’re getting your dopamine hit. You want people to be wrong, in your mind. You like having enemies. And, as Mike has pointed out, you seem to have a fetish for getting schooled here.
You’re so right, you have to keep redefining words to make your point.
And what if the system as designed discriminates? If things are racist in their default state, you just accept it? I thought the law says you can’t discriminate on race?
You do realize that voting districts aren’t separated by walls or armed guards right? It’s like you don’t understand what the word segregate means in a historical or political context…
I bet you really think this is true.
In the last presidential election, the state went to Trump 60-38. That’s not deep red. It’s not entirely accurate, but if we use that as a rough measure, that means about 40% of the districts should be blue. They had Democratic governors in 2015 and 2019.
You are literally looking at the results of gerrymandering you favor and saying, “you can’t gerrymander, we already gerrymandered!” You are projecting so hard, the Artemis II crew probably saw it from the moon.
Prematurely denying the truth doesn’t make it any less true. At best, you’re one of those racists who thinks racism is only overt stuff like saying the n-word or burning a cross on someone’s lawn. That stuff is easy to see, so it’s easier to deal with. But you’re worse because you support systemic racism, including the denial that racism is present and systemic. That’s far more nefarious. I don’t trust your sincerity, but it is actually possible you don’t think you’re racist. But that just makes you the same type of racist we’ve been dealing with since the civil rights acts were passed. “Racism is over because we let black people vote sometimes…”
I appreciate that you acknowledge you aren’t a normie.
“I like the racism I already have, thank you!”
About the end of racism in elections
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote regarding one such step of the Roberts court:
“[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
That still holds regarding the current court’s reasonings and decisions.
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RB was an activist judge who rules based on the ends, not the law, tho.
If Congress wants to strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear a case or group of cases Congress has to pass a law to do so.
I don’t know if that authority has been used outside of the reconstruction era laws to prevent confederates from having their habeas petitions reviewed at the Supreme Court though.
I’ve read numerous essays criticizing the Dobbs ruling, but few point to the most egregious consequence: Allowing the States to impose a specific religious belief upon women. This was the start of the gradual abandonment of “separation of church and state.” Stay tuned for total abandonment of that principle.
John Roberts can and should go down in the history books as one of America’s biggest racists. The rulings his court has presided over in re: race and racial issues can effectively be summed up like this: Whether race criteria counts as constitutional is dependent only on whether it centers white people. It’s why the Voting Rights Act is effectively dead and Kavanaugh stops are legal.
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Don’t forget he also likes forcing raped children to die in childbirth and looks up to a guy who burned “witches”
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When he cited a witch burner while sentencing women to rot to death from the inside from pregnancy complications, Republican voters thought it was fucking great.
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“racist” doesn’t mean “I didn’t get what I want” you retarded clown.
If you don’t think they should be overturned, doesn’t that mean you agree with those rulings? You just acknowledge the consequences.
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Is it that complicated for you to understand the difference between what is Constitutionally not allowed and the idea that there are other ways to deal with the consequences of that?
This isn’t Law. It’s not even Calvin-ball.
For some reason I keep misreading this as the “Cialis decision” and wondering if that’s what it takes for Alito and Roberts to get it up these days.
Gish gallop as common law.
In what world is a the VRA’s purported requirement to racially gerrymander–there is no other valid description for needing to pack half the population of race into a third of a state’s districts–compatible with 14th amendment equal protection?