And that includes ending racial gerrymandering.
On Friday a Fifth Circuit panel heard arguments in a Voting Rights Act lawsuit (Robinson v Ardoin) that seeks to force Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority Congressional district. The case was put on pause while the Justices considered a challenge to Alabama’s map. Now the plaintiffs are using the Court’s Alabama ruling (Allen v Milligan) to advance an extreme racial gerrymander.
Never mind the 14th Amendment’s injunction that nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Or the 15th Amendment’s Art I:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Or the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which prohibits election practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race.
The 14th Amendment bars discrimination on the basis of race—which setting up representational districts explicitly to favor one race over others does. The 15th Amendment makes that even more explicit: favoring one person’s right to vote over another’s explicitly abridges that other person’s right to vote.
As if those Amendments weren’t clear enough—and apparently social justice warriors in the general population and even our courts’ activist judges and Justices can’t read—the VRA is explicitly explicit on the matter.
The Supreme Court is badly mistaken in Allen. Either all American citizens are equal under law, or we’re not. Creating a legislature’s representation districts to favor one group of Americans over other groups is one of the last bastions of racism in our nation.