A prominent election law expert noticed something major shifted with Chief Justice John Roberts last month, and he can’t find a reassuring explanation for it.
Writing in Slate, University of California, Irvine law professor Richard Hasen, one of the country’s leading voting rights scholars, says Roberts spent four decades carefully dismantling the Voting Rights Act one methodical step at a time. But in the past 30 days, the chief justice has thrown that patience out the window, and the consequences for American elections could be severe.
Louisiana v. Callais, in a 6-3 ruling, effectively gutted what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the very provision Roberts had previously pointed to as a safety valve when he helped strike down other voting protections in 2013, Hasen said.
Hasen was spooked by the speed of the ruling, as the court rushed its final judgment in Callais, bypassing normal procedural timelines. Days later, it handed Alabama a sweeping redistricting victory, green-lighting the elimination of a Black opportunity district even after a lower court found intentional racial discrimination.
Hasen warned states can now use partisan gerrymandering as a legal defense against racial discrimination claims, a distinction he called “nonsensical in the South, where 90 percent of Black voters support Democrats.”
“Every state now has an incentive to squeeze out as many seats for the dominant party as it can, hurting not just minority rights but representation for voters across the country,” he said.
Hasen offers three possible explanations for Roberts’ sudden urgency: naked partisanship, motivated reasoning that blinds conservatives to harm they’re causing, or a 71-year-old chief justice who sees the clock running out on his project to reshape American democracy before the court faces serious reform pressure.
“Roberts did not tell us why he is suddenly in a hurry, but none of the possibilities are good ones,” Hasen wrote.
Hasen coined the “Purcell principle,” the legal doctrine the court just abandoned, and said he has reluctantly changed his mind on Supreme Court reform as a result.
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