So this goes right back to my OP. Any law is restrictive and a pain in the ass. For me, that means one less fine dining this week. For a poor person, that means a ding on credit for paying the electric bill late. I get that. I understand that.
But to extrapolate from that and say that as every law has a restrictive impact on poor people, and therefore minorities, unnecessarily and improperly injects race into the debate. As it did in this case.
I’ve asked you this before, so here it is a second time:
Do you care to address the issue of disparate impact?
I don’t think I want to pretend that this is a new topic that he hasn’t discussed before.
I’m outta here.
This is, perhaps, your funniest observation in this whole thread. If you think that Alito’s opinion is simply the result of dispassionate, objective analysis, I have a large swamp in Florida that you might be interested in for your next condo development. He dislikes the VRA as much as Kagan likes it, and this is clear from the contortions he goes through in order to effectively eviscerate it.
Because, like Shelby County before, this case is probably more important for its future consequences than it is for the particular issue being decided in the case. While I think that the lawyers challenging the Arizona law, as well as Kagan’s dissent, make some strong points about the disparate impact of the Arizona law on particular racial and ethnic groups within the state of Arizona, the consequences of this ruling will be far more consequential in other cases that come before the courts.
When the Supreme Court killed the preclearance rule in Shelby County, they and their supporters basically said to the critics, “What are you complaining about? You’ve still got Section 2 of the VRA to protect you against discrimination.” But now the court has dramatically limited Section 2, gutting the key protections of the VRA and likely helping to preserve all sorts of discriminatory voting laws that have been passed, and will be passed, in other states. Arizona is just the start.
Your whole discussion also seems to rest on this rather thin “analysis.”
But that’s not exactly the issue that the VRA addresses, or the way that it reads. And this is where your incredibly dull and simplistic dismissal of Kagan really exposes your own prejudices on the matter. I find her reading of the statute itself far more compelling than Alito’s, and I thought you might actually be interested in such things, given that you have defended textualism on this board in the past.
Alito says, near the beginning of his opinion, that the place to start is the text, but he then spends 37 pages basically ignoring the text of the statute that he’s supposed to be ruling on. He says that the court is declining to “announce a test to govern all VRA §2 claims involving rules” for voting, but then proceeds to lay out a series of five criteria for evaluating such claims, which he must know that lower courts will effectively use as a test in future voting rights cases. These rules are disconnected from the text of the statute, and are clearly outcome-oriented and purposivist. He spends a lot of time on legislative intent, the work of committees, alternative text proposed for the revision of Section 2, and a whole bunch of other stuff conservatives often whine about when liberal justices do it. He also, for some reason, seems to believe that any voting restrictions that existed in 1982, when Congress amended Section 2, should generally be presumed valid, as if Section 2 wasn’t amended precisely to reduce discrimination and restrictions.
Now, I’m not necessarily accusing Alito of hypocrisy here. He has never claimed to be a textualist, and what he has always been–perhaps never more so than over the past couple of years–is a hidebound ideologue. But make no mistake, this decision is basically what conservatives are always claiming to hate: legislating from the bench.
What’s even more puzzling is why someone like Gorsuch signed on to an opinion that is so completely unmoored from the text. For Gorsuch, text is supposed to be the first and last point of analysis. Legislative intent, legislative history, implicit purposes, and practical considerations are, in his strict textualism, essentially irrelevant and are supposed to yield before a close reading of the statute (or the constitution, depending on the case). How he signed onto this opinion is completely beyond me, and I’m also surprised that Amy Coney Barrett attached her brand of textualism’s approval to Alito’s opinion.
Maybe, but it’s no better to completely ignore the issue of disparate impact, which Alito basically does, and also to make the test for discriminatory intent or purpose so rigid that it can basically never be met.
Under Alito and the majority’s understanding of discriminatory intent, you might be able to establish racially discriminatory intent in a voting restriction if the legislature actually passed this bill while wearing bedsheets and white hoods, but even then Alito would probably give the members of the legislature a chance to explain that all their clothes were in the laundry that day, so they had nothing else to wear.
Alito scolds the dissent for not considering the “totality of the circumstances,” but he just chooses a different totality when he chooses to ignore the clearly differential impact of this law on particular groups in the state of Arizona.
For people who care about the spirit of the Voting Rights Act and the reality of democracy, this was a pretty terrible decision. One possible bright spot is that it was a statutory analysis case which, unlike a Constitutional interpretation case, is not a place where the Supreme Court necessarily has the last word. If Congress can get its act together while the Dems control the House and the Senate, they could, if they wanted, pass a new Voting Rights Act that effectively says, “Despite the rantings of Sam Alito, we are actually serious about preventing discrimination.”
Harvard law professor and voting rights expert Nick Stephanopoulos, in an interview yesterday with constitutional scholar Leah Littman of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, actually offered a short and punchy sentence that could effectively erase the opinion in this case:
Littman suggested that a bit more detail might be necessary in order to establish clear standards, and we could talk about possible additions, but the fact is that Congress and the President can effectively nullify this ruling if they can get together on a bill.
So you’re acknowledging this law puts a greater burden on black people than it does on white people.
That’s the literal definition of racism.
If you think there are too many accusations of racism going on, maybe we should approach it from the point of having less racism going on.
If the average white person has to travel two miles to go to an office that issues ID and the average black person has to travel twenty miles to go to an office that issues ID, that’s racism.
If the average white person has to stand in line ten minutes to vote and the average black person has to stand in line two hours to vote, that’s racism.
So, yes, there is a black line that you don’t have to stand in.
It shouldn’t be met because as is my argument nobody wants to stop black people from voting. Nobody. Nobody in MS or AL. Nobody anywhere. The entire argument is bullshit and only exists for an ill-gotten purpose.
Yes, people 55 years ago completely and illegally stopped black people from voting. Terrible. Awful. Before I was born and shameful.
But the argument today is that people can’t find their own mailbox.
Does the VRA have to forever exist when it was only thought to be needed for 5 years? Who do you know that thinks that these (racial slurs) shouldn’t vote? Your best estimate? 2% of the population? And if the meaning of these (racial slurs) can’t vote is a law that only requires that they or a caregiver walks to a mailbox, then we are at loggerheads.
Does the state establish black and white living areas?
If that’s your synthesis of the case, then we have nothing else to talk about, because you’re clearly not interested in a substantive discussion. I’m done here.
Could these statements simply mean that poorer neighborhoods have shittier services than richer ones? And if the distinction is poverty, the back to my OP. It isn’t racism.
No. But Republicans are able to look at census data and see where black people and white people live and then make decisions about where they will set up polls. So it isn’t a coincidence that places where white people live getting better polling access than place where black people live.
Is home, on your couch, an oppressive place to vote?
Continuing the discussion from SCOTUS: Arizona voting law constitutional:
Hard to believe you are this obtuse and ignorant. The Navaho nation is 25,000 square miles and equivalent to the size of West Virginia with about 110,000 people. They basically don’t have streets and barely any roads.
This is one of the most blatant examples but follow all of your other reasons for why “these are not racist laws targeted at minorities that tend to vote democratic party.” I mean, I have a street address, so why should native Americans not have one?
Can anyone explain to me how this ruling differs from Williams v. Mississippi, the decision that basically jump started Jim Crow?
There race was never specifically mentioned in the laws that set up poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses, it just by pure coincidence that they happened to hinder black voters more than white voters.
So what’s your argument? It’s acceptable for some parts of the system to be racist as long as other parts aren’t racist?
I don’t agree with that. I feel we should fix the racist parts of the system and get rid of the racism in those parts.
Tolerating partial racism would be bad enough if we were just talking about some holdovers from the past. But that isn’t the case here. This is part of a deliberate ongoing plan by Republicans to increase the amount of racism in our voting system.
Hmmm. Really?
Phones were ringing in Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and on the line was a robocall with an ominous campaign message: If you want to vote by mail, it warned, your personal information will be turned over to the police and to debt collectors.
The call played on crude racial stereotypes and was blatantly false — but dishonesty was the point. Whoever engineered it apparently wanted to sow confusion and fear among people of color in Democratic strongholds before the Nov. 3 presidential election. Far from an aberration, UC Berkeley scholars say, the robocall was just one flashpoint in a wider campaign playing out in courtrooms, legislative chambers and political communication in battleground states and nationwide.
The objective, pursued by Republicans in a seeming war of attrition, is to use a range of tactics and tools to reduce the number of votes cast by people of color, swinging a close election to incumbent President Donald Trump and away from Democrat Joe Biden.
“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
The statement drew a loud round of applause from the audience. It also struck a nerve among critics, who called it an admission that they passed the bill to make it harder for Democrats to vote — and not to prevent voter fraud as the legislators claimed.
After the election, former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer told The Palm Beach Post that the explicit goal of the state’s voter-ID law was Democratic suppression. “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post . “It’s done for one reason and one reason only … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’” he said. Indeed, the Florida Republican Party imposed a host of policies, from longer ballots to fewer precincts in minority areas, meant to discourage voting. And it worked. According to one study, as many as 49,000 people were discouraged from voting in November 2012 as a result of long lines and other obstacles.
Yes. Its recommended that you don’t mail it within 3 days of the election, though. Good thing you have over a month to do so.
This isn’t why the law is racist. The racist part is this:
Many laws place burdens on people, and like all burdens falls more harshly on the poor and on minorities. Laws that do this for a legitimate purpose aren’t racist.
Laws that have no legitimate purpose are enacted specifically (or recklessly) to target the poor and minorities with burdens. This is racist, and classist.
It’s easy to say there is a legitimate purpose, that’s just words tumbling out of someone’s mouth. Legitimacy, as in legitimate legitimacy, is earned. You have to prove it, study it, honestly and objectively show why this legitimate purpose balances out the burdens placed on our citizens. Have ANY voter restrictions in the last 20 years done this?
Poverty and racism are inextricably linked in the US. It’s not a coincidence that black people are poorer that white people. It’s the result of hundreds of years of policy largely intended to produce that result.
You’re assuming that everyone gets mail delivery to their homes. That isn’t true. Hell, it isn’t even true in rural New York State; but here’s yet another cite about “racial” disparities in mail delivery in Arizona: VOTE BY MAIL - Native American Rights Fund
Oh, good grief.
Do you think people just make up their own street addresses and tell the post office what they are? It’s the other way around: the post office tells you what your street address is. If they say you haven’t got one, then you haven’t got one. And if they say they don’t deliver out where you are, then they don’t deliver out where you are.
You keep saying this; even after multiple people have pointed out, and cited, that there are significant numbers of people who can’t vote from their couches.