JUSTICES READY TO SIDE WITH OHIO PURGING POLICY | Trump Says Courts Broken And Unfair | RBG’s Sneak Attack On Partisan Gerrymandering
January 11, 2018
WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR RIGHT
|Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the voting rights case out of Ohio known as Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. In question was whether the state’s policy for purging voters from its registration rolls violates federal law. The justices seemed ready to give states broad latitude to purge their databases, with only the court’s three most liberal justices appearing convinced that the Ohio procedure is unlawful. JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, for example, noted that the essence of the case is about whether Ohio’s process is “disenfranchising disproportionately certain cities where large groups of minorities live, where large groups of homeless people live, and across the country they’re the group that votes the least.” Apparently, she was the only justice to note the political implications of this case — one that not coincidentally came to the justices from one of the most crucial battleground states.
COMPLETE GOBBLEDYGOOK
|Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick argues Ohio’s defense for its voter purge policy is “complete gobbledygook.” Unfortunately, she says, it’s gobbledygook the justices were eating up. “Purging hundreds of thousands of voters for failure to vote, while pretending it’s because they’ve moved, doesn’t seem like a particularly strong argument. Apparently, after Wednesday, it is.”
SOME WINE WITH YOUR WHINE?
|Yesterday, PRESIDENT TRUMP called the federal court system “broken and unfair” after a judge blocked his administration’s attempt to end the DACA program which protects young immigrants brought to the United States illegally by their parents. A San Francisco judge had ruled Tuesday that DACA should remain in effect until legal challenges brought in multiple courts are resolved. In response, Trump wrote on Twitter: “It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) … almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.”
SOMETIMES YOUR WORDS JUST HYPNOTIZE ME
|ICYMI, on Tuesday a federal judge made history and slapped down North Carolina’s congressional map — the first ruling of its kind which invalidated a redistricting scheme for gerrymandering along partisan lines. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern points out that this decision was made possible in part thanks to JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG. A former opinion of hers “has already given lower courts the tools they need to restore democracy in states where it is under siege.”