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A 160-year-old campaign against civil rights heads to the supreme court - Leah Litman @ The Guardian
The GuardianWith so many things happening everywhere all at once, the start of a new supreme court term on 6 October may be flying under the radar. It shouldn’t.
The state of checks and balances in the country is among the more ominous indicators of the health of America’s democracy: in the executive branch is a president who is keen on exercising every lever of power that he has – as well as some he does not – to enrich himself and his allies and to suppress dissent and political opposition. The legislature is dominated by a regime-friendly political party that is too happy to roll over and accede to the president’s wishes, repeatedly failing to exercise the congressional powers that could rein in the executive branch.
Because the executive and legislature branches seem to have jumped the constitutional shark, some people continue to hold out hope that the judicial branch, with the supreme court at its apex, will offer a way out of this mess. That would be a mistake: like Congress, the Republican majority on the supreme court has lined up behind most of the president’s sweeping assertions of novel powers. The supreme court has blocked lower federal court rulings that had reined in the president’s authority to withhold federal medical research grants for ideological reasons. It has allowed the executive branch to deploy roving immigration patrols to engage in racial profiling; to expel noncitizens to countries on the brink of civil wars where they could face torture, trafficking or death; to fire non-regime friendly officials (in violation of federal law); to dismantle entire departments and more.
But one specific case on the court’s docket for this term illustrates its role in a more far-reaching rightwing project that goes back all the way to the end of the civil war.
Louisiana v Callais is a major challenge to what remains of the Voting Rights of Act of 1965, and could radically rework the structure of political representation in the United States. A successful challenge to the VRA would allow the Republican party to further cheat democracy by engaging in even more partisan gerrymandering and erasing several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities.
The state of checks and balances in the country is among the more ominous indicators of the health of America’s democracy: in the executive branch is a president who is keen on exercising every lever of power that he has – as well as some he does not – to enrich himself and his allies and to suppress dissent and political opposition. The legislature is dominated by a regime-friendly political party that is too happy to roll over and accede to the president’s wishes, repeatedly failing to exercise the congressional powers that could rein in the executive branch.
Because the executive and legislature branches seem to have jumped the constitutional shark, some people continue to hold out hope that the judicial branch, with the supreme court at its apex, will offer a way out of this mess. That would be a mistake: like Congress, the Republican majority on the supreme court has lined up behind most of the president’s sweeping assertions of novel powers. The supreme court has blocked lower federal court rulings that had reined in the president’s authority to withhold federal medical research grants for ideological reasons. It has allowed the executive branch to deploy roving immigration patrols to engage in racial profiling; to expel noncitizens to countries on the brink of civil wars where they could face torture, trafficking or death; to fire non-regime friendly officials (in violation of federal law); to dismantle entire departments and more.
But one specific case on the court’s docket for this term illustrates its role in a more far-reaching rightwing project that goes back all the way to the end of the civil war.
Louisiana v Callais is a major challenge to what remains of the Voting Rights of Act of 1965, and could radically rework the structure of political representation in the United States. A successful challenge to the VRA would allow the Republican party to further cheat democracy by engaging in even more partisan gerrymandering and erasing several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities.
My SCOTUS term preview for the Guardian - it focuses on the case challenging what remains of the Voting Rights Act (Callais), how that's part of a centuries-old campaign against Reconstruction, & how that's representative of several issues on the Court's docket.
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) 2025-09-28T18:11:15.402Z
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
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