Five House seats may well shift to Democrats in the wake of “Allen v. Milligan.” After leading the charge for years to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Chief Justice John Roberts did a stunning about-face and spearheaded its preservation in Allen v. Milligan. The 5-4 majority opinion, written by Roberts, held that Alabama’s congressional map… Read more »
John Wilkes, Adam Clayton Powell, and Julian Bond were elected, excluded and returned to the legislature. On March 30, three days after a man armed with two legally purchased assault weapons killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, more than 1,000 high school and college students marched to the State Capitol and… Read more »
For the first time in the history of the United States, a committee of Congress has recommended to the Department of Justice that it prosecute a former U.S. president. The bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol unanimously referred four federal criminal charges against Donald Trump to the… Read more »
On December 7, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could deliver control of elections to partisan state legislatures and spell the end of state court oversight of voting rules — a form of judicial review that has been in place for more than two centuries. As a result, protections for the right… Read more »
Recent exposés have uncovered an emerging pattern of improper lobbying of right-wing Supreme Court justices by wealthy evangelicals. They reveal serious threats to the independence of the judiciary. But equally alarming is that the Supreme Court is unconstrained by a code of judicial ethics. From 1995 to 2018, the right-wing evangelical nonprofit Faith and Action… Read more »
During the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, a case that could deal a severe blow to the Voting Rights Act, Ketanji Brown Jackson powerfully rebutted right-wing attacks on voting rights by using her own “originalist” analysis of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to explain why congressional district maps cannot constitutionally be drawn in a “race-neutral”… Read more »
Donald Trump’s installation of three radical right-wingers on the Supreme Court is already yielding frightening victories for religious zealots and racists. Last term, the court’s conservative majority revoked the constitutional right to abortion from half the population in the United States. This term, it is poised to eviscerate voting rights for people of color and legalize election… Read more »
Divided strictly along ideological lines, the Supreme Court construed what was left of the historic Voting Rights Act (VRA) to uphold two Arizona voter suppression laws that civil rights organizations had challenged for disproportionately burdening voters of color. This decision sends a dangerous signal to states that the courts are likely to uphold their voter… Read more »