The South rises again.

60 Years Later, Alabama Lawmakers Defy the U.S. Supreme Court Again

At the end of July, Republican lawmakers in Alabama passed a new congressional map following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan which upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and affirmed that the state needed a map with two majority-Black districts. However, in direct defiance of federal courts, the new map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature has only one majority-Black district.

When Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the noncompliant maps into law and openly defied the directive issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, she stated, “the Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups, and I am pleased that they answered the call, remained focused and produced new districts ahead of the court deadline.”

This is not the first time that Alabama legislators have defied U.S. Supreme Court decisions in order to weaken the constitutional rights of their Black residents. Beginning in 1954, Alabama waged a decade-long stand-off with the nation’s highest court over desegregation in the public school system following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brown v. Board of Education.
https://www.democracydocket.com/ana...a-lawmakers-defy-the-u-s-supreme-court-again/

I use the word "South" here as a reference to the historic proclivity of southern states' use of government power to prevent black Americans from exercising their right to vote. Not to mention any number of other rights, like equal treatment, they possess as Americans. In this particular case not so much their right to vote but how impactful their votes will be.

I honestly don't know how frequently a state's governor has enthusiastically defied a SC ruling so brazenly. I don't think it's common. It makes me wonder what she thinks the end game is. What is the political play? She can't credibly cry foul about a ruling from the most conservative court in decades. The degree of gerrymandering and its purpose could not be more obvious. What gives Kay?

 

After gutting portions of the VRA CJ Roberts said........“Our country has changed. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

Has there been progress in black people's ability to exercise their right to vote? Yes. Are some state's Repubs working hard to diminish that progress? Yes.

 

It's like a free play after an off-side. If the results of the elections favor democrats, it's all good. If they don't, the Supreme Court will have to invalidate them and call for new elections.

 

A certain mindset prevalent in the southeastern and southern states has been available for one or the other of our two political parties to pander to for many, many decades. Which party holds sway over these states depends upon which party in a given time period is willing to hold its nose and get the votes.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

 

I guess I expected a more robust response by the DoJ to AL Repubs giving the middle finger to the SC. Perhaps they are waiting for the AL SC to rule and take it from there.

 

So, when democrats in NY do this, AJ never starts a thread... But AL does something, and it's the apocalypse.... Funny how that works.

 

Dems in NY refused to comply with a SC ruling? I wasn't aware of that.

 

Of course you're aware of it. Why be this disingenuous?

Democrats Lose Control of N.Y. Election Maps, as Top Court Rejects Appeal
The Court of Appeals said Democrats violated the State Constitution and ignored the will of the voters. The judges ordered a court-appointed expert to draw replacements.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/nyregion/redistricting-congress-gerrymander-ny.html

So much for your veracity....

 

Not a ruling by the SC. So much for your credibility.

 

Let me know when the state of NY gets a hearing.

 

So you see United States Supreme Court in that article? I searched, looked high and low but am unable to find it.

I am 100% sure that you would never post information so it’s in there somewhere, can you point it out?

 

Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court

A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

In a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel, which had overseen the case before it reached the Supreme Court, the judges wrote that they were “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions in the case.

The state had snubbed the Supreme Court’s order – a surprise 5-4 decision in June – that the maps should be redrawn. White voters currently make up the majority in six of the state’s seven congressional districts, although 27% of the state’s population is Black.

“We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/poli...court blocked a,had ordered earlier this year.

Cheating has become the primary election strategy of the POT.

 

Alabama officials appealed Tuesday to the Supreme Court, seeking intervention so they can use a congressional map awfully similar to the one said Supreme Court knocked down less than three months ago.

After the Supreme Court nixed the old map in Allen v. Milligan this June, the Alabama legislators were supposed to craft a new one that gave Black voters at least the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice in two congressional districts.

Alabama turned in a new map…with only one such district.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/alabama-redistricting-maps-supreme-court

AL Repub's motto being, if at first you don't succeed implementing institutionalized discrimination against black voters try, try again.

 

Arguments On South Carolina’s Maps Show How Thoroughly Supreme Court Broke Redistricting

To someone unfamiliar with the country’s recent redistricting history, Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral arguments must have sounded bizarre.

The justices and attorneys alike all candidly acknowledged that South Carolina legislators had manipulated their maps to artificially maximize Republican vote power and minimize Democrats’. They made no attempt to obfuscate that state Republicans were determined to pick their own voters, to rig elections until it became virtually impossible for their party to lose.

It’s a reflection of how grotesque redistricting cases have become ever since the conservatives on the Supreme Court, in 2019, decided that partisan gerrymandering cases were no longer justiciable in federal court. The only danger for South Carolina legislators, then, would come from the Supreme Court agreeing with the district judge panel that they’d used voters’ race — rather than party — to try to achieve that partisan end. It paints another layer of farce onto the case that, particularly in the South, race and partisan lean are often inextricably linked.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/south-carolina-supreme-court-redistricting

Imagine a time machine having dropped you in to the SC chambers from just 5 years ago. Before the conservatives on the Court decided egregiously gerrymandered districts, a subversion of democratic principles, is not a matter for them to sort out. So that states with large Repub majorities, who elect Repub state SC judges, are empowered to allow Repub legislators to ensure they will be re-elected.

 

Jackson: Supreme Court Does Not Endorse 5th Circuit’s ‘Extraordinary’ Interference In Louisiana Map Case

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to revive a district court hearing to craft a new Louisiana congressional map that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had unceremoniously canceled in late September.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in concurrence to clarify that the Supreme Court was not greenlighting the Fifth Circuit’s interference in the case — which experts told TPM was bizarre.

“Nothing in our decision not to summarily reverse the Fifth Circuit should be taken to endorse the practice of issuing an extraordinary writ of mandamus in these or similar circumstances,” she wrote.

She continued on that she understood the Fifth Circuit’s canceling of the hearing to be solely in service of giving the Louisiana legislature time to consider alternative maps. Now that state officials have said that they won’t consider other maps while this case is pending, she said, she expects the crafting of the remedial maps by the lower court to continue as planned.

“The District Court will presumably resume the remedial process while the Fifth Circuit considers the State’s appeal of the preliminary injunction,” she wrote.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jackson-supreme-court-5th-circuit-louisiana

After the Supreme Court knocked down Alabama’s gerrymandered map in June, court watchers, redistricting experts and those invested in which party controls the House of Representatives did quick napkin math to figure out where that decision would redound.

One obvious answer was Louisiana, where a district court had enjoined the congressional maps as a likely VRA violation last summer. The Supreme Court froze that case in place in June 2022, pending the outcome of the very similar Alabama one.

Now the case is moving again. But the Louisiana litigants — and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — are working to scuttle the automatic redistricting fix many expected. They seem to be procedurally walking in slow motion, trying to delay producing a map that empowers Black voters and would likely give Democrats a House seat until they butt up against the 2024 elections and run out of time.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/louisiana-gerrymander-5th-circuit-supreme-court

IOW, the 5th Circuit is trying to enable LA Repubs to cheat.

 

Google New York guns laws and you'll be aware of it.

 

Help me find what you're referring to. https://www.google.com/search?q=new...ABgWGB6oAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1

 

New York gun laws are unconstitutional. The state is violating the Constitution and ignoring a Supreme Court ruling. But that's ok. Right?

 

It’s ok to gerrymander by race?

 

Link please.

 

The GOP’s Secret To Protecting Gerrymandered Electoral Maps? Claim Privilege.

Eva Bonilla grows furious when she thinks about how Latino voters are treated by the Republican power structure in Texas. At 74, the small business owner watched the GOP Legislature pass a series of measures like a voter ID law that she felt would make it harder for Latinos to cast ballots or run for public office.

Two years ago, serving as the leader of a Hispanic women’s group in Fort Worth, she decided to strike back. The Republican Legislature had just pushed through new election maps that carved up Latino communities and made it even harder for them to elect candidates of their choice. So Bonilla joined other minority voters as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit alleging intentional discrimination in the 2021 redistricting plan.

“I wanted to see the right thing done, and this is just not right,” she said.

Then Bonilla waited.

In 2022, an election came and went with districts based on the challenged maps. It has now achieved a dubious distinction: Of the 87 lawsuits filed over the 2021 congressional and legislative redistricting plans nationwide, it has dragged on the longest without having held a trial. As another election looms, a trial date has not even been set.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...-gerrymandered-electoral-maps-claim-privilege

The word for the POT's efforts regarding gerrymandering is relentless.

 

Link to what, exactly?

 

A link that proves your assertion.

 

North Carolina Republicans’ Brazen Power Grab Will Be Difficult To Defeat Before 2024

The North Carolina legislature giddily passed its new congressional map Wednesday, an aggressive gerrymander that would near-automatically flip three currently Democratic seats and make a fourth a more Republican friendly tossup.

A combination of state and federal factors make it very unlikely that the map will be taken down by the 2024 election. At the state level, North Carolina has seen the elbowing out of the (currently Democratic) governor from the process, a lack of any opportunity for direct citizen action and a newly extremist right-wing North Carolina Supreme Court. At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court has closed the courthouse door to partisan gerrymandering cases.

After the 2022 election, when the North Carolina Supreme Court was re-stocked with right-wing justices, the court rubber-stamped the legislature’s partisan gerrymander, reversing a mere months-old decision by its more liberal predecessor. With no recourse for a partisan gerrymandering claim available there, that leaves a racial dilution claim under the Voting Rights Act, which can still be adjudicated at the federal level.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/north-carolina-republicans-gerrymander-2024

NC continues the Repub electoral strategy, if you can't win fair and square.......cheat.

 

Uhhhh the north did that to the south before the civil war openly defying multiple scotus decisions. Then they initiated a war killing hundreds of thousands of their own countrymen and cemented the precedent that the state doesn’t have to follow the SCOTUS as long as the federal government doesn’t enforce it.