“By contrast, simply pointing to inter-party racial polarization proves nothing, because ‘a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact.’” – Justice Samuel Alito
In writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the quiet part out loud. Yesterday’s landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and opened the door to racial discrimination disguised as hyperpartisanship.
Within an hour of the decision, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, the frontrunner for governor in Tennessee, seized the baton from the court’s conservatives and raced to be the first to call on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to convene a special session to redraw the congressional lines. In fact, before the end of the day, Blackburn’s team had taken her organic X post, which was broadcast across the state by media outlets, and converted it to a paid ad. In the midst of writing this piece, President Trump posted to Truth Social that he has spoken with Governor Bill Lee, who pledges to work with the congressional delegation to redraw the lines.
What Blackburn and, eventually, her lagging primary opponent, Congressman John Rose, said was that Memphis, the only Democratic congressional district in the state and the only majority Black city in the state, “deserves” to be represented by a white Republican. In practice, that means the Republican supermajority with surgical precision will carve out precincts of Black voters and graft them into the heavily Republican 8th congressional district represented by David Kustoff. Then, in a procedure that will make Grey’s Anatomy surgeons look competent, they will lop off chunks of Republican counties in the 8th and stitch them on to the remaining majority Black precincts in the City of Memphis, and “Voila!” a new majority white and Republican 9th congressional district.
Bolstering the legality of this in-your-face maneuver is a 2024 SCOTUS decision in which Alito also wrote for the majority. This time in Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, Alito opined that state legislatures should be given the benefit of the doubt when they claim that vote dilution of minority voters was because of political party, not race. Alito said that to win a claim based on racial discrimination, there must be,
“a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
Politico has an excellent article documenting the long history of cases in which Justice Alito has systematically dismantled the Voting Rights Act, and, for some on the legal right, reinterpreted the 14th Amendment. Central to his rulings is the notion that, according to Alito, “Vast social change has occurred across the country and particularly in the South.”
While it is true that minorities have more opportunities and more avenues of redress than they did prior to 1965, discrimination based on race remains prevalent in every corner of society. History has taught us that all of our fellow Americans cannot be counted on to afford others of different races and backgrounds equal rights and opportunities, absent the laws designed to protect those minority groups.
The clearest example of what happens when you withdraw these measures can be found immediately following Reconstruction. During the height of Reconstruction, federal troops occupied the South, more than half a million Black men became voters, and Black men were elected to Congress. After federal troops withdrew in 1877, white supremacists terrorized Black citizens, and the political power structure rescinded voting rights and adopted Jim Crow laws. The doctrine of separate but equal was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson by a SCOTUS vote of 8-1. It is hardly capricious to think that neutering the Voting Rights Act could lead to more, not less, discrimination.
For all of his intellect, degrees, and legal training, Alito fails to realize, or chooses not to accept, the simple construct that two things can be true at once. It can be true that the GOP supermajority can grossly gerrymander the City of Memphis based on blatant partisanship, as suggested by the court’s majority, and equally true that the act of doing so is racially discriminatory.