Today brings yet more evidence that the Supreme Court is not quite the conservative steamroller we often make it out to be:
The Supreme Court restored a congressional voting map in Louisiana on Wednesday that includes an additional majority-Black district, handing a victory to African American voters and Democrats less than six months before the November election.
Oddly, the three liberals dissented, for reasons that went unexplained. In any case, this overturns a lower-court decision and pretty obviously gives Democrats an additional safe seat in a red state.
One thing that Kevin and many other people opining on SCOTUS decisions often miss is that SCOTUS is usually deciding something much bigger than the case currently on the docket.
For example, Yates vs. US (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/574/528/) established that a fish is not a business record and that Yates would not be convicted of destroying a business record for throwing an undersized fish overboard. This was frankly unimportant and SCOTUS would never have taken it if that was all it was. However, the case actually says hugely important things about the scope of Sarbanes Oxley (which may get the Jan 6 rioters reduced sentences) and, more abstractly, how far prosecutors can go to use a statute to prosecute conduct that the writers of the statute probably were not contemplating when they enacted it. (To see how complicated this can be, note that Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion and Kagan wrote the dissent with Scalia and Thomas joining her!)
If you just look at this case as being about a single majority black district in Louisiana you will never understand the ruling or the lineup of the justices.
Kevin is not exactly a sophisticated thinker.
I respectfully disagree. I've read Kevin's blogs since his Calpundit days when he was part of the resistance to the inanities of the Bush administration. A card-carrying lefty with no concern whatsoever for identifying nothingburgers wherever he finds them across the political spectrum. A 10th dan blackbelt in Excel spreadsheet graphing. I don't agree with his optimistic interpretation of this latest SCOTUS action, but I don't fault him for wanting to take the win in this case.
he can take the win all he wants
he can't ignore the SCOTUS history of doing this sort of stuff as preamble to some other worse decision on its way.
there is long precedent for that with Roberts Courts
That's stupidly wrong. Kevin is a creative thinker who came up with one of the more interesting socio-criminal theories of recent times.
Kevin is not a constitutional lawyer. He hasn't spent thousands of hours studying the messy accumulation of politicized weirdness we call foundational law.
So tell me, Somebody123, what have you contributed to our understanding of conlaw? You must have published something proving your nuanced grasp of the issues.
If you are referring to the lead-crime hypothesis, Kevin has been an avid promoter/cheerleader, but he did not come up with it. That would be Rick Nevin …
Whether or not Kevin is a sophisticated thinker, he is not a lawyer although (as here) he engages frequently in legal commentary. This commentary is much more often wrong then right, often egregiously so, and (as I have noted here before) he really should stop opining on subjects outside his expertise. (FWIW, I'm a retired lawyer with a JD from Cornell where I was an editor of the law review. I think my ability to analyze legal issues is better than Kevin's. I wouldn't presume to offer commentary on marketing.)
Agreed. This is a head fake. I trust that the non-conservatives dissented for good democracy-preserving reasons. There are at least 3 important cases they haven't issued rulings on yet, so plenty of room for conservative assholery to screw democracy and good government, reassure their Federalist Society masters, and pleasure their billionaire sugar daddies.
I don't think anyone is missing the fact that there's broader implications beyond the specific case. Neither Kevin nor most commenters here are that naive. Kevin in fact specifically noted "the three liberals dissented, for reasons that went unexplained". But not sure why he says it went unexplained as the article he linked states:
Jackson wrote separately to say the court’s intervention was premature.
That view reflects a broader concern among the court’s liberals about the conservative majority’s instinct to prevent changes to redistricting plans and voting policies several months before an election. In her dissent, Jackson suggested the court had more time to sort out the case and determine the right map for the state.
Jackson wrote that the “question of how to elect representatives consistent with our shared commitment to racial equality is among the most consequential we face as a democracy,” but she objected to the Supreme Court getting involved now.
ding ding ding
this is something they feel is inconsequential relative to something else that is coming.
these sorts of decisions always have a political calculation to them with Roberts
They didn't exactly side with Democrats. They chose to let Louisiana use the map that was drawn by Republicans to protect Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise, rather than let the redistricting process proceed. Had they left the process alone, the District Court would have issued a more favorable -- meaning neutral -- map for the 2024 election by June 4.
The Roberts court has long been by far the politically shrewdest pro-GOP institution within movement conservatism, and if any things seizes the opportunity to give the odd "victory" to non-conservatives, in the hopes of maintaining a patina of reasonableness and political respectability to the general public (and to gullible pundits like our Kevin!).
Basically, the odds of a decision breaking for Republicans rise in direct proportion to the policy and political stakes. The conservative movement can survive the loss of a single seat in Louisiana. Also, why risk pissing off Black voters in an election year when the polling suggests you're making a bit of headway with this cohorts (at least among males)?
The right wingers on that court know exactly what they're doing. Very rarely does a big decision go against MAGA/GOP these days.
Indeed, my distinct impression is that the court typically throws non-conservatives a bone or two to lighten the atmosphere immediately before coming down with some big goodies for the conservative movement. Is that case involving Chevron deference (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo) due for a decision? I'd imagine so...
I don't understand the case at all.
However, this comment makes no sense "Oddly, the three liberals dissented, for reasons that went unexplained. "
It seems to me that the case split perfectly with three conservatives on one side and three liberals in dissent.
SCOTUS might have helped the Democrats, again, I don't understand.
When the six conservative Justices vote as a block against the three liberal justices then this quote "the Supreme Court is not quite the conservative steamroller we often make it out to be:" is just WRONG.
They are EXACTLY the conservative steamroller I expect them to be, but they are VERY smart (which is how they got these jobs) and know that a slow boil is more effective than a blow torch.
They are eroding democracy and freedom at the edges, knowing that they are part of a broad effort and they don't need to do it all themselves with hamfisted, obvious decisions.
Lipstick on a pig.
The dissents signal something wrong with this court’s rationale and the way it “solved” the inequity. I’m not a lawyer but I trust those in dissent far more than this biased tunnel-visioned majority.
There's commentary about this elsewhere in the blogosphere. As I understand it, the legal reasoning behind the decision actually advances an important
reactionaryconservative principle -- I forget the name of the case/doctrine -- that is expected the majority will use to change voting rights law substantially for the worse in the future. That is, it's an accidentally fortuitous outcome: Dems win this one, but we should expect considerably worse to come.I am a lawyer. The problem is the court used PURCELL to issue the stay and that is a very bad case for voting rights. Basically, that case limits when objections can be heard and they re-affirmed it once more.
+1. Exactly. This was a small bone to throw the libs because letting the process play out in district court would have resulted in the same or a worse redrawing (for Rs). It also gave the right-wingers on the court an opportunity to re-affirm use of the idiotic "Purcell principle," which only helps Rs trying to squash re-draws that help VRA minorities (the dissent criticizes using Purcell).
thank you. Over at TPM, they made the point that the liberals agreed with the outcome, but not the reasoning, so they dissented.
According to scotus blog, "Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, explaining that in her view it is too early for Purcell to apply and there was no reason for the Supreme Court to intervene at this stage."
All the coverage makes it clear that this was another application of the conservative majority's "too late to change it for this election" principle, which effectively means that if a state legislature gerrymanders the state's districts close to an election, that gerrymander cannot be challenged until after the election is completed.
I can see why the liberal justices might oppose that as a general rule.
Multiple experts are saying that allowing the current map to stand for 2024 and then be challenged is a fundamentally conservative move because it then gives the court another chance to gut the Voting Rights act; dismissing this case entirely and allowing the map to stand without further review would have been a refutation of the principle that creating a non-white-majority district by looking at voter race is prohibited by law because it discriminates against white people.
But there's a more fundamental problem with Kevin's analysis: at least in theory, the court's legal rulings ought to be based on the law and not on the political preferences of the court's members. We all understand that isn't always happening. But does anyone really believe that, when faced with a case where the legal merits point one direction and political preferences another, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson choose political preferences more often than Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito? Equally? Might it even be possible that the liberal justices are more concerned with the law than with their decisions benefiting the Democratic party? Kevin seems to be taking equal partisanship amongst all the justices for granted: cynical, but do the facts support it?
Judging from the shape of the new district, the Supremes also got to uphold extreme gerrymandering.