Mistakes made by the U.S. Supreme Court

Civil rights demonstrations were rife at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the 1960s. Most are aware of the lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro that garnered national publicity, but our Daily Tarheel newspaper kept students informed of demonstrations around campus and in town. I recall one demo where civil rights leaders walked into an African American high school classroom — not integrated in 1954? — and walked out followed by the entire class to protest segregation.

As a poli sci major, I completed courses involving local and state governments. One significant class was all about state government, and the main research in that field had been done by Dr. W. Brook Graves. He was the undisputed expert in the field and was generally known as “Mr. State Government.”

Just a few years later, I signed up for Dr. Graves’ class at American University in Washington, D.C., called “Intergovernmental relations,” a phrase he coined in his text book of that name. It was Dr. Graves’s belief that the best government occurred when all three levels — local, state and federal — worked together. (In a previous opinion published March 5, I mentioned that Dr. Graves was a leader in state government research.)

On March 4, the Supremes denied the removal of Donald Trump from state election ballots to ensure there was a consistent national approach and not many different approaches. But this statement is laughable when we look at other SCOTUS decisions that have done exactly that: result in myriad approaches, or no approach whatever.

The best example is the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision handed down in 1954 by the Warren Court. Many educators and reporters for news media have made the broad statement that Brown desegregated public schools. It should have, but the court did not understand Southern States’ hatred of desegregation. Implementing action was left to the states, guaranteeing no action in Southern states, piecemeal in others. In my home state of Virginia, the legislature passed over 200 laws in the 1950s, called “Massive Resistance,” prohibiting desegregation. Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd, the conservative leader in Congress, said it was the worst idea he’d heard. (see “The Encyclopedia of Virginia.”)

White public schools were repurposed and renamed institutions forbidding attendance by Black students. In a major travesty, several county school districts closed their doors to African American students for up to five years. Researchers would later estimate the damage to Black students was the loss of a decade of education.

But what about implementing Brown? Most of the South continued operating under Jim Crow laws and rules until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 abolished most white supremacy legislation that had existed for 300 years. Another Supreme Court case: Loving v. Virginia in 1967, abolished rules against interracial marriage (see the movie, “Loving”). Note that Alabama did not change its constitution allowing interracial marriage until 2000.

Today conservatives and the Republican Party have flip-flopped on their support of SCOTUS. Once given a super majority by Trump-appointed justices, conservatives have switched from being against judicial legislating of liberal courts begun during the 1930s to fully supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, wiping out over 50 years of judicial precedent.