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June 17, 2023 - Epoch Times
10:55
Supreme Court Forces RACIAL QUOTAS on Congressional Apportionment
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In what I can only describe as a truly surprising turn of events, the U.S. Supreme Court has just passed a new major decision which will force the different states throughout the country to consider race when apportioning their congressional districts.
And of course, this is the year 2023, and so it's all being done under the banner of anti-racism.
Now, to start with, the Supreme Court decision came down about a week ago, on June the 8th.
And in this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially struck down Alabama's electoral map for congressional districts, ruling that that particular map was racially discriminatory.
However, this case and the subsequent decision require a bit of backstory.
You see, most people are aware in this country that we have something known as the Voting Rights Act.
It was passed back in the year 1965.
And here is a plain English summary of Section 2 of that particular act.
Quote, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a large language minority group.
Okay, so that is a summary of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act passed in the year 1965.
Then, you fast-forward a little bit to today, and over in the state of Alabama, here is what the electoral map looks like.
You can see it up on screen for yourself.
And in regards to that map, you'll notice that District No.
7 is the only majority-minority district, meaning that only in District No.
7 did non-white minorities represent the majority of the voters.
In the six other districts, white people were the majority.
Now, over in Alabama, this configuration has been in place since about 1993, with exactly one majority-minority district.
However, in the year 2020, the results of the U.S. Census revealed that the racial makeup of the state had changed a little bit.
In Alabama, the U.S. Census showed that the portion of white residents fell by 4%, going from 68% 10 years ago to 64% today, while at the same time, Alabama's black population Increased by almost exactly the same amount, by about 3.8% over that same 10-year time period.
And so, as a result of the census, in the year 2021, the Alabama Republican-led state legislature, they modified the existing districts in order to account for this shift in demographics.
However, the new map, just like the previous maps before it, still only had one district that was majority-minority, which was again district number 7.
The other districts were still majority-white.
This then led to several lawsuits being filed against the state, arguing that the state legislature had actually violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by not creating a second majority-minority district.
Their argument was essentially that since 26% of Alabama's overall voting age population was black, then around a quarter of the districts should be majority black as well.
They were accusing the state of drawing up maps, which essentially diluted the voting power of black Americans.
In terms of articulating the argument, well, the current Solicitor General of the United States, she was representing the Biden administration in the case, and here is how she articulated the argument.
Quote, Voting in Alabama is intensely racially polarized, about as stark as anywhere in the country.
The history and effects of racial discrimination in the state are severe.
Black voters are significantly underrepresented.
And so that was the general argument.
What happened was that there were two separate cases, which were eventually consolidated into one case, both against the state of Alabama.
On the flip side, however, the actual state of Alabama, they for one defended the new map, making the argument that they were now required to redraw the districts to assure that black voters control a certain number of seats in the state delegation.
And second of all, they urged the Supreme Court to actually amend and weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, since they claim that that section was unconstitutional in the first place.
And after several years of legal back and forth, going through the different levels of the judicial system, the case finally appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, who ultimately ruled against the state of Alabama.
The decision was split 5-4, with John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Alina Kagan, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Brad Kavanaugh voting against Alabama.
In the majority opinion, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, he first dismissed Alabama's invitation to revise Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by saying this, "We are content to reject Alabama's invitation "to change existing laws.
We find Alabama's new approach to Section 2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice.
We, accordingly, decline to recast our Section 2 case law as Alabama requests.
Then Chief Justice John Roberts went on to acknowledge that this type of forced redistricting can lead to the balkanization of a country before dismissing the argument and essentially ruling against Alabama anyway.
Here's specifically what he wrote.
It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here.
However, Alabama's position runs headlong into our precedent.
A district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face, unlike their majority peers, block voting along racial lines, rising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the state that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a non-minority voter.
And as such, the majority of the court ruled against Alabama and is now forcing them to adopt a new map before the 2024 presidential election.
Meaning that as a practical matter, the Supreme Court has just ruled that for one, congressional districts must be racially drawn, and that secondly, Instead of going towards a more, you can say, race-neutral direction, this decision, it codified into law the idea that black Americans are a distinct, monolithic voting bloc that have interests different from other voting Americans,
which, at least on the face of it, appears to go directly against the principle of having a legal system that is race-neutral, which is actually exactly the argument that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was making in his 50-page-long dissenting opinion.
Here's part of what Justice Thomas wrote.
The question presented is whether Section 2 of the Act, as amended, requires the state of Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the state's population.
Section 2 demands no such thing, and if it did, the Constitution would not permit it.
At the outset, I would resolve these cases in a way that would not require the federal judiciary to decide the correct racial apportionment of Alabama's congressional seats.
The text of the Voting Rights Act is focused on ballot access and counting.
The Voting Rights Act doesn't mandate that Alabama intentionally redraw its long-standing congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the state's population.
The majority of the court goes to great lengths to fossilize all the worst aspects of our long-deplorable vote dilution jurisprudence.
It virtually ignores Alabama's primary argument that whatever the benchmark is, it must be race-neutral, choosing instead to chaotically joust with an imaginary adversary.
However, this was, of course, a dissenting opinion and it represented a minority of the court.
The majority ruled in a different direction.
And as such, Mr.
John Wall, who is the chairman of Alabama's Republican Party, he put out a statement shortly after this decision was made saying that state lawmakers will be complying with the new ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here's what he wrote: "Regardless of our disagreement with the court's decision, we are confident the Alabama legislature will redraw district lines that ensure the people of Alabama are represented by members who share their beliefs while following the requirements of applicable law." And now, let me take a super quick moment to introduce the sponsor of today's episode.
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Now, besides the state of Alabama, it's worth mentioning that there are several other states across the country that are in similar situations with regards to their congressional maps.
These include Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, as well as about seven other states that currently have federal court cases involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
And so we'll have to wait and see how this new court ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court will affect those other states as well, which have slightly different situations from what we're seeing in Alabama.
However, there is something I'd like to ask you, the viewer of this episode.
One of the biggest legal trends over the past 50 to 100 years has been the, you can say, dismantling of overtly racist laws that were on the books here in America.
Whether it was the overturning of Brown v.
Board of Education, the elimination of the so-called Jim Crow laws, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and so on, And so,
in light of that, Do you agree with this new Supreme Court decision?
Or do you perhaps think that since black Americans have had a history of discrimination in this country, they should be treated differently, and the state should be forced to portion the congressional maps in order to maximize their voting power?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below.
I'll be reading them later tonight as well as well into the week.
Furthermore, if you'd like to read either the PDF version of the Supreme Court decision or the dissent from Clarence Thomas, I'll throw the PDF versions of those down into the description box below this video.
You can click on those links and read them for yourself at your own leisure if you would so like.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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