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Nov. 1, 2023 - Epoch Times

12:34

Big Update After Supreme Court’s 5–4 Unexpected Decision | Facts Matter

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	Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I mention it often, but I mean it every single time.
	If you are sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, as well as the myriad of other platforms out there as well, and if you're looking for a source of actual honest news, well, consider checking out The Epoch Times, because they've recently extended their awesome sale and subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which, if you do the math, works itself out to just be a single dollar a month.
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	I'll throw a link to the sale page.
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	Now, diving into the main topic.
	Five days ago, in a truly surprising turn of events, a federal judge over in the state of Georgia, he ordered the creation of several new congressional districts that are majority black.
	Specifically, Judge Steve Jones, who was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama, he ordered the Georgia State Legislature to throw out the current maps and to instead redraw the maps so that a total of eight electoral districts, which are currently majority white, can be flipped to instead be majority black.
	And of course, since this is the year 2023, it's all being done under the broad banner of anti-racism.
	Here was exactly what the judge wrote as a part of the justification for his order.
	Quote, Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting.
	However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.
	The electoral districts now in place do not reflect the fact that the growth of the state's non-white population has outpaced the growth rate of the white population.
	And as such, he ordered that the current maps must be redrawn with eight new majority black districts to be created.
	And according to this order, the state legislature has to do this in time for the upcoming 2024 election.
	Now, if you're listening to this and thinking to yourself, hold on a minute, this sounds overtly racist.
	Aren't all American voters supposed to be treated equally regardless of their skin color?
	And the answer, since June of this year, is surprisingly no.
	The Supreme Court has actually made it such that states essentially need to do it this way, as unbelievable as that sounds.
	However, in terms of how we got to this point, that requires a little bit of explanation.
	So let me back up for a quick moment and set the stage for you properly regarding what's taking place over in Georgia.
	And I hope that if you appreciate content like this, you do take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons, which will force the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to ever more people.
	Now, to start with, I believe that most people are aware that in this country 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 law.
	Quote, So that is, broadly, what Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act passed back in 1965 says, that you can't discriminate based on color or based on race.
	Okay, so then you fast forward to the modern day, and over in the state of Alabama, here's what the electoral map looked like.
	You can see it up on screen for yourself.
	And in regards to that map...
	District number seven is the only majority-minority district.
	Meaning that only in district number seven did non-white minorities represent the majority of the voters.
	In the other six districts, white people were the majority.
	Now, over in the state of Alabama, this general configuration has been the same since 1993, with only one majority-minority district.
	However, in 2020, the results of the U.S. Census revealed the fact that the racial profile of the state had actually changed.
	In Alabama, the U.S. Census showed that the proportion 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 the same amount, by about 3.8% over that same time period.
	And so, as a result of that census, in 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 maps before it, still had only one district that was majority-minority, which was, again, district number seven.
	The other districts were still majority-white.
	This situation 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, essentially, was 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.
	And in terms of articulating the argument, Ms.
	Elizabeth Preliger, who is the current Solicitor General of the United States, and she was representing the Biden administration in this particular case, here is how she presented the argument.
	Quote, Black voters are significantly underrepresented.
	On the flip side, however, the state of Alabama, they defended their maps, making the argument that they are not required to redraw the districts just to assure that black voters control a certain number of seats in the state delegation.
	And after several years of legal back and forth, the case finally wound up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, who ultimately, in June of this year, ruled against the state of Alabama.
	The decision was 5-4 split, with John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Alina Kagan, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Brett Kavanaugh all voting in favor of creating these electoral districts based on race.
	And in the majority opinion, which for your reference was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, he acknowledged that this type of forced redistricting might lead to the balkanization of our country, but he wrote that it still needs to be done.
	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, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the state that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a non-minority voter.
	Meaning that as a practical matter, the Supreme Court, they ruled that for one, congressional districts must be racially drawn, and that secondly, it essentially codified into law the idea that black Americans are a distinct monolithic voting bloc that have interests that are distinct from other voting Americans.
	Regardless of what you think of that notion, whether you think it's right or wrong, that is now the law of the land.
	And once the Supreme Court made this decision back in June of this year, it opened the floodgates for other similar lawsuits across the whole country.
	And indeed, since last June, similar legal challenges have been filed over in the state of Arkansas, Kentucky, in Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, as well as Utah.
	And all this brings us right back to the case over in Georgia.
	What happened there was that a lawsuit was brought forth by an organization called the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, which is a non-profit for black Americans, which, at least according to their website, describes themselves as a, quote, organization strengthening the brotherhood and standing for social justice.
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	And this organization, they filed a lawsuit against the Georgia Secretary of State, accusing the state of violating the Voting Rights Act as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
	And after about a week-long trial, Judge Jones, who was the judge in the case, after he conducted what he called a, quote, thorough and sifting review of the evidence in this case, he went ahead and he ruled for the plaintiffs.
	Directing the state legislature to create, quote, He then further added that, quote, However,
	it's not clear whether it'll come to that, given the fact that just hours after this order came down from Judge Jones, the Georgia governor, he called for a special legislative session to meet in November in order for them to work on the new maps for the upcoming election.
	Now, it is worth mentioning, though, that this decision might be appealed.
	And if it is, the appeals court might put the judge's order on hold, meaning that the current maps might be used for the upcoming 2024 election.
	However, that hold will likely be temporary, given the fact that the Supreme Court ruling from June appears to be on the side of Judge Jones.
	And so, even if the appeals court puts a hold on the order, very likely these eight majority black congressional districts will be created eventually.
	And so that's the situation playing itself out over in Georgia.
	If you'd like to go deeper into this particular case, I'll throw all my research notes, including the full text of that Supreme Court decision which started it all.
	It'll all be down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure.
	And then also, there's something that I'd like to ask you.
	One of the biggest legal trends over the past 50 to 100 years here in America has been the dismantling of overtly racist laws that were on the books.
	Whether it was the overturning of Brown versus Board of Education, whether it was the elimination of the so-called Jim Crow laws, whether it was the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and so on and so forth, they all broke apart the actual racism that was embedded into our legal system.
	People became, at least in theory, no longer treated differently based on their race, and instead, they were treated equally as free citizens of America.
	Now, in practice, there were still obvious problems, but the trend outside of some affirmative action laws, the general trend in this country was moving more and more towards laws that were neutral in regards to race.
	And so, in light of that trend, do you agree with this Supreme Court decision?
	Or do you think that perhaps since black Americans do have a history of discrimination, especially down in the South, they should be treated differently, and the state should be forced to apportion congressional maps in order to maximize black voting power?
	I'd love to know your thoughts.
	Please leave them in the comments section below.
	I'll be reading through them tonight as well as into the week.
	And then lastly, as I mentioned at the top of the episode as well, if you are indeed sick of all the censorship on this particular platform, with or without the government's involvement, well, you're in luck.
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	And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times.
	Stay informed.

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