If Trump becomes President, it is quite likely at least 2 Supreme Court Justices will retire, opening the door for the nomination of younger right-wing justices that will be on the Court for 30 to 40 years.
It is the president who nominates the Supreme Court justices and the Senate that confirms them. We must ensure democrats come out ahead in each. In this issue of the Kicker, we highlight the Supreme Court rulings that set the stage for where we are in 2024, with supermajorities in the legislatures, activist state AGs, dark money funding campaigns and influencing legislation, and constant efforts to suppress the vote. In future editions we will show how their latest rulings affect all of us and change how the government functions. Dark money enters politics: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) A conservative nonprofit group called Citizens United challenged campaign finance rules after the FEC stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton too close to the presidential primaries. A 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections. In the court’s opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that limiting “independent political spending” from corporations and other groups violates the First Amendment right to free speech. The justices who voted with the majority assumed that independent spending cannot be corrupt and that the spending would be transparent, but both assumptions have proven to be incorrect. With its decision, the Supreme Court overturned election spending restrictions that dated back more than 100 years. Previously, the court had upheld certain spending restrictions, arguing that the government had a role in preventing corruption. But in Citizens United, a bare majority of the justices held that “independent political spending” did not present a substantive threat of corruption, provided it was not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. As a result, corporations and wealthy individuals can now spend unlimited funds on campaign advertising if they are not formally “coordinating” with a candidate or political party. Igniting voter suppression efforts by striking at the heart of the Voting Rights Act: Shelby County v Holder (2013). The Supreme Court effectively struck at the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval. The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and the nation’s progress in rooting out racial discrimination in voting. At the core of the disagreement was whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states (like Georgia) with a history of discrimination. “Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “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.” The Supreme Court declared that racial discrimination in voting was a thing of the past and gutted the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. With that invitation, at least 94 restrictive voting laws have been passed across 29 states in the years since. The protections won by advocates like John Lewis have been systematically weakened, putting the freedom to vote in jeopardy. The majority held that the coverage formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965 and updated by Congress in 1975, was unconstitutional. The section had determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the bench, stating the focus of the Voting Rights Act had properly changed from “first-generation barriers to ballot access” to “second-generation barriers” like racial gerrymandering and laws requiring at-large voting in places with a sizable black minority. She said the law had been effective in thwarting such efforts. Setting the stage for minority rule by allowing gerrymandering: Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) In a 5-4 decision along traditional conservative-liberal ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is a political question — not reviewable by federal courts — and that those courts can't judge if extreme gerrymandering violates the Constitution. The ruling puts the onus on the legislative branch, and on individual states, to police redistricting efforts. "We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts," Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the conservative majority. "Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions." Roberts noted that excessive partisanship in the drawing of districts does lead to results that "reasonably seem unjust," but he said that does not mean it is the court's responsibility to find a solution. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan blasted the five conservative justices. She accused them of abdicating their duties with a “tragically wrong” decision that would have disastrous consequences for American democracy. “Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent.” This has led to extreme gerrymandering; The Supreme Court has declined to put boundaries on gerrymandering unless it’s explicitly race-based. The United States is the only advanced democracy that allows such gerrymandering; it means there are fewer competitive congressional districts, and thus fewer lawmakers are incentivized for bipartisan compromise. The GOP takes control of State Legislatures, Secretaries of State, State AGs, Local Government, then Congress. Owing to the Supreme Court rulings detailed above, state legislatures began to gerrymander local and federal districts while at the same time taking steps to restrict and suppress votes in non-GOP districts. This further consolidated GOP control within the states, creating super majorities in state legislatures and resulting in representation in the U.S. House that’s out of sync with voting demographics. This, in turn, has allowed representatives to act in ways unaccountable to their broader constituency. The GOP has worked to elect like-minded Secretaries of State and Attorneys General, which sets the stage for state officials to carry out voter suppression measures. This includes taking greater control of the election process and enforcing far-right policies, such as abortion bans. The 2020 election challenges and promotion of the Stop the Steal movement highlighted this fact and, in 2024, the efforts to control the outcome of the election are likely to be even more sophisticated and far reaching. Comments are closed.
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October 2024
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