How to Ignore/Rewrite the Constitution Made Easy

How to Ignore/Rewrite the Constitution Made Easy

“We are stuck with one another whether we like it or not.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her book “Listening to the Law.”

The Trump reconfigured Supreme Court seems hellbent on repealing the civil rights legacy of the famous Eisenhower era Earl Warren court. The Warren Court noted that the reconstructionist constitutional amendments were focused on leveling the voting playing field for all races and ethnicities, yet somehow earlier congressional classes simply failed to pass the expected implementing legislation. The Warren court also set about undoing the toxicity of the Jim Crow era. But as right wing, racially biased Supreme Court justices were added, they seethed, awaiting their time to reverse decades of the Warren Court’s rulings. The big change began with two George W Bush appointments two decades ago.

As noted by David Savage writing for the May 5th Los Angeles Times: “Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court 20 years ago believing the government may not make decisions based on race… Their first major ruling was a 5-4 decision that struck down voluntary school integration policies in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. It was illegal to encourage some students to transfer based on their race, Roberts said…. When faced with a redistricting case from Texas, Roberts described it as the ‘sordid business ... [of] divvying us up by race.’… With President Trump’s three appointees on the court, the conservatives had a solid majority to change the law on race. Three years ago, they struck down college affirmative action policies.” The unsubtly continued.

Writing for the May 4th The Atlantic, David A. Graham, notes how the conservative faction of the Supreme Court is obsessed with the word “race”: “Seven years ago, midway through a multiyear demolition of the Voting Rights Act, John Roberts’s Supreme Court heard a case on a slightly different topic: partisan gerrymandering. Republican legislators from North Carolina had drawn a map of U.S. House districts that courts, including the high court, had found was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the VRA. So, the North Carolina lawmakers tried again, this time going out of their way to make clear that they were trying to reduce Democratic representation, not Black representation.

“The gambit worked. Roberts, writing for the majority, lamented that partisan gerrymandering was pernicious and unfair. ‘Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,’ he wrote in Rucho v. Common Cause. But the majority nonetheless concluded that federal courts had no role to play in policing partisan gerrymandering, because it was a political question. Still, Roberts didn’t want that to seem like an endorsement: ‘Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering.’

“That was then. The conservative majority’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais [in late April] doesn’t just tolerate but encourages states to embrace partisan gerrymandering as a justification for squeezing out majority-Black districts. As politicians work through the impact of the decision, Republican-led governments in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have all announced plans to try to redraw maps this week, and South Carolina’s legislature may not be far behind. The mission will be drawing the most ruthless partisan gerrymanders they can, in the hopes of protecting the GOP majority in the U.S. House.”

Whether these red states can act fast enough to prevent a Democratic retaking of the House, given the proximity to the midterms, remains a question, but Trump and his reactionary Court seem willing take that chance but seal the Democrats out of national politics in time for the 2028 national election. Writing for the May 4th Puck.com, Abby Livingston tells us: “House Democrats had less than a week to savor their redistricting victory in Virginia before conservatives punched back—twice. First came the passage of Ron DeSantis’s new Florida map, which could eliminate four Democratic seats. Then came the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which blew up Voting Rights Act protections for minority-majority districts across the South.

“The court’s ruling came down too late to impact Democrats’ bullish chances of retaking the House next November. Even so, Dems are reaching an R.B.G.-death level of panic about the 2028 cycle and the party’s longer-term capacity to control the House. With more time, Republicans are expected to dismantle around a dozen V.R.A.-mandated majority-minority districts, potentially unseating nearly all of the South’s Black Democrats.

“But as Democrats have learned, the best way to fight gerrymandering is to gerrymander even harder in return. They already have their sights set on new maps in New York and New Jersey next year, and are expected to try again in Illinois and Maryland. They’re also hopeful that the anticipated 2026 wave might consolidate their control of states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington—putting them in a position to execute even more retaliatory redraws. The court’s decision has not only intensified the existing redistricting war, but ensured it would spread to other neighborhoods: ‘This could be done in more states by the next census, at the rate this is increasing,’ said a Democratic chief.” Yes everyone admits gerrymandering is wrong and unfair!

The Trump enhanced Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, and through a series of cases, also repealed the Voting Rights Act, piece by piece, as they released ostensibly pro-Christian rulings ignoring the 1st Amendment’s separation of church and state, and seem to be poised to cull the Congressional Black Caucus almost out of existence. The Roberts Court has mercilessly used the once rarely applied shadow docket to support Trump’s blatant efforts to usurp Congressional constitutional power and impose his own edicts by executive order.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the Roberts’ majority of the Supreme Court seems to have effectively waged a civil war by judicial distortion, having greater impact than an entire well-armed rebel army, turning the United States slowly into sheer autocracy, led by an unpopular President who may well be seriously mentally impaired.