The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has quietly abandoned one of its own legal doctrines — and it did so in the middle of an ongoing election, in the dead of night, and without explanation, according to two lawyers.
The so-called Purcell principle, which the Court has invoked repeatedly over the past several years to protect the rights of minority voters, holds that state legislatures cannot change their election maps when an election is too close. But that principle was just thrown out the door in Louisiana v. Callais, according to legal experts Marc Elias and Joyce Vance.
Elias and Vance discussed the ruling on a new episode of the “Democracy Docket” podcast.
Elias pointed out that the Supreme Court relied on the Purcell principle to block a federal order requiring Alabama to redraw congressional maps that were found to discriminate against Black voters when the primary election was nearly five months away. But that principle was thrown out the window last week when it ruled that state legislatures can gerrymander their election maps on a partisan basis.
The ruling led Republican-controlled states like Louisiana and Alabama to immediately redraw their maps, with Louisiana’s governor declaring a state of emergency and disrupting an ongoing election to do so.
“There is no way to explain why Black Alabamians in 2022, when the election was almost five months away, it was too late,” Elias said. “But in Louisiana, white Louisianans, when the election is ongoing, get an assist from the Supreme Court, saying it is not too late.”
Vance also expressed frustration with the Callais ruling.
“The conservative majority on the Supreme Court must be doing some serious yoga practice to be able to contort themselves into this kind of pretzel logic,” Vance said.
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