Legal experts blasted Chief Justice John Roberts for his part in weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its ability to block discrimination when district maps are drawn.
“For Chief Justice John Roberts, this is a huge asterisk on his legacy in such a bad way,” journalist and lawyer Katie Phang said during an interviewfor the Contrarian with lawyer and professor Leah Litman. “He has had a series of really not good asterisks next to his name, but this, I think, is one of the biggest ones.”
The 6-3 decision on Louisiana v. Callais came down on Wednesday. Phang described the decision as “clearing the way for the GOP to racially gerrymander us back to the days of Jim Crow voter suppression.”
Litman noted that Roberts “began his career as a lawyer in the Reagan Department of Justice, pushing to limit the Voting Rights Act, pushing against the amendments to the Voting Rights Act that sought to expand its protections to encompass unintentional discrimination.”
Roberts “dismantled the other key leg of the Voting Rights Act,” as the author of the opinion in the case Shelby County v. Holder, Litman added. “So, yes, he has been able to cultivate this appearance and reputation as an institutionalist. He is a hard-line ideologue on the Voting Rights Act, and always has been.”
Litman warned that people should “never, never buy into this narrative that the Republican appointees are just respecting the democratic processes.”
She also pointed out that while Justice Samuel Alito penned the majority opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, “Roberts, he is the senior-most justice in this opinion. That meant he had the option of who to assign the opinion to.”
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