I Had Hoped to Retire That Label

The Supes had other ideas.  Sorry.  Respect for the judiciary and all that.  But apparently the majority of justices spent the last couple of years not reading the papers (I don't expect them to read this blog.  That would be silly.  But major newspapers, even the Washington Post, have been concerned with the rollback of voting rights in the guise of so-called "voter fraud."  And remember, the "voter fraud" that has been turned up has been committed by Republicans and/or conservatives.  There are more lightning strikes hitting millionaire lottery winners than "voter fraud") or the case law.

Here is the actual decision.  Most of the really enraged writing got posted yesterday (I was inarticulate with fury, and then I went to a baseball game, which my team won despite the attempt to do the Wave counterclockwise), but Jesse Curtis had a nice essay yesterday, and a longer piece today, in which he states:

I'm actually more disturbed by the conservative reaction to the ruling than by the decision itself. I have not yet seen a single conservative criticize the decision. They are making it abundantly clear that they oppose proactive federal efforts to protect Americans' rights. Indeed, the predominant line of argument conservatives are taking implies that they envision the eventual repeal of all civil rights laws. They are treating yesterday's decision as almost self-evident progress. The idea seems to be that since we've made so much progress against racism, civil rights laws are now ugly distortions in our otherwise colorblind corpus of law. Removing protections is thus not a step back, but a ratification of the progress we've made.

As always, context is the terrifying enemy of racial conservatives. So let's introduce them to some context. In the United States of 2013, minorities are racially profiled with impunity, arrested for drug crimes out of all proportion to their use of drugs, receive harsher average sentences for identical crimes, attend unequally funded schools, frequently attend segregated schools that are, according to the Brown decision, inherently unequal, live in neighborhoods of much higher average poverty than almost any whites are exposed to, bear the brunt of environmental pollution, face pervasive discrimination in hiring even when their qualifications are identical, are discriminated against by realtors and banks, and, you get the idea. We're not going to have a debate about these things; if you do not accept them you are not ready to have an honest discussion. The point is, given this state of affairs, the urgent priority is to identify what more we can do to tear down this racist edifice. Worrying about repealing old civil rights laws, even if they were no longer needed, would be pretty low on our list of priorities.

Sorry; that was the smallest chunk I could take.

From the dissent (p.13, J. Ginsburg):

All told, between 1982 and 2006, DOJ objections blocked over 700 voting changes based on a determination that the changes were discriminatory. H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, at 21. Congress found that the majority of DOJ objections included findings of discriminatory intent, see 679 F. 3d, at 867, and that the changes blocked by preclearance were “calculated decisions to keep minority voters from fully participating in the political process.” H. R. Rep. 109–478, at 21. On top of that, over the same time period the DOJ and private plaintiffs succeeded in more than 100 actions to enforce the §5 preclearance requirements. 1 Evidence of Continued Need 186, 250.

Examples (recent examples, too) are given on pp.15-17 of the dissent, which is 37 pages long (the rest of the opinion is 31 pages).  I hear Justice Ginsburg actually yelled at Justice Scalia et al.  I don't blame her.  I've mislaid John Lewis' statement, but it was pretty scathing.

(In other news, DOMA is (partly) down and Prop 8 (California) is dead.  And I am happy about that.  John Scalzi's reaction.  Presumably the NOM people are making like Denethor after the beacon at Minas Tirith is lit.)