Gerrymandering: A Supreme Court surprise
The Supreme Court “did something genuinely shocking” last week, said Ian Millhiser in Vox. It defended the Voting Rights Act with a decision that “all but assures that Democrats will gain at least one congressional seat” in 2024—and possibly more. Alabama’s 2021 election map contained one majority-Black congressional district out of seven in a state that is 27 percent Black. Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberal justices in upholding a lower court’s decision that the map diluted Black representation in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Roberts’ authorship of the opinion is especially remarkable given his “past attacks on voting rights,” including a 2013 decision gutting the law’s requirement that former Jim Crow states “preclear” any changes in election law with federal officials. His about-face means Alabama will get an additional majority-Black district, and activists challenging racially gerrymandered maps in Georgia, Louisiana, and elsewhere now have a fighting chance.
How disappointing that Roberts has abandoned “color-blind law,” said George F. Will in The Washington Post. In a 2006 Supreme Court opinion, Roberts famously called divvying up districts on the basis of race “a sordid business.” The VRA was passed to end intentional racial discrimination, but identity politics has so infected the country that even Roberts has capitulated. In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that drawing up districts on the basis of race should be unconstitutional, said Dan McLaughlin in National Review. But Roberts deferred to a 1986 Supreme Court ruling affirming that race can be a consideration. Like it or not, “race-conscious line drawing” has become judicial precedent.
The reason for Roberts’ sudden change of heart is obvious, said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. “This would hardly be the first time” Roberts’ rulings appear calculated to avert public backlash against an increasingly radical court. In 2012, “he got cold feet” and prevented conservative justices from declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Last year, he made a “desperate effort” to stop the conservative majority from overturning Roe v. Wade. Now, as the court is poised to ban race-based affirmative action in colleges, he’s making a desperate effort to “calm the waters.” Despite Roberts’ professed dedication to “balls and strikes” judicial neutrality, “he’s become the quintessential weather vane.”