Justice Clarence Thomas, in the court\u2019s latest decision upholding a GOP-drawn redistricting map in South Carolina, took aim at a key, decades-old civil rights decision, calling it an \u2018extravagant [use] of judicial power.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with the Republican-led South Carolina legislature after it was challenged for alleged racial gerrymandering in drawing new redistricting maps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a 6-3 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court said that \u2018a party challenging a map\u2019s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship. Second, in assessing a legislature\u2019s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.\u2019<\/p>\n
In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education \u2013 written by his predecessor, Justice Thurgood Marshall \u2013 introduced an \u2018extravagant [use] of judicial power.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Brown decision said that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, and overruled the \u2018separate but equal\u2019 legal doctrine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomas, who grew up in the segregated South, has repeatedly stated that the Constitution prohibits race-based discrimination, regardless of the intent, and its devastating effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the case last year banning affirmative action in college admissions, Thomas wrote a concurrence \u2018to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution\u2019 and to \u2018clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race \u2014 including so-called affirmative action \u2014 are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments,\u2019 he said. \u2018What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything \u2014 good or bad \u2014 that happens in their lives.\u2019<\/p>\n
In 1995, Thomas wrote a lone concurrence in the case of Adarand Constructors, Inc v. Pe\u00f1a, stating that the government\u2019s \u2018benign discrimination\u2019 that tries to help racial minorities who are \u2018thought to be disadvantaged\u2019 is another form of invidious \u2018racial discrimination, plain and simple.\u2019<\/p>\n
Thomas\u2019 point in his concurrence in the case decided Thursday is that federal courts are not qualified to determine how voting maps are designed.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Constitution provides courts no power to draw districts, let alone any standards by which they can attempt to do so,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018And, it does not authorize courts to engage in the race-based reasoning that has come to dominate our voting-rights precedents. It is well past time for the Court to return these political issues where they belong \u2014 the political branches,\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomas said that \u2018the Court once recognized its limited equitable powers in this area.\u2019 The federal courts have the power to grant either legal remedies, such as monetary damages, or equitable remedies, such as compelling or prohibiting a certain act.<\/p>\n
\u2018We previously acknowledged that \u2018[o]f course no court can affirmatively re-map [a State\u2019s] districts so as to bring them more in conformity with the standards of fairness for a representative system. At best we could only declare the existing electoral system invalid.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
But he said that the Brown decision \u2013 which was decided 70 years ago almost to the day of Thomas\u2019 concurrence \u2013 introduced \u2018[t]he view of equity required to justify a judicial mapdrawing power.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The Court\u2019s \u2018impatience with the pace of desegregation\u2019 caused by resistance to Brown v. Board of Education \u2018led us to approve\u2026extraordinary remedial measures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Thomas explained that in the follow-up case to Brown, the Court considered \u201dthe manner in which relief [was] to be accorded\u2019 for vindication of \u2018the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018In doing so,\u2019 Thomas wrote, \u2018the Court took a boundless view of equitable remedies, describing equity as being \u2018characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018That understanding may have justified temporary measures to \u2018overcome the widespread resistance to the dictates of the Constitution\u2019 prevalent at that time, but, as a general matter, \u2018[s]uch extravagant uses of judicial power are at odds with the history and tradition of the equity power and the Framers\u2019 design,\u2019\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Ultimately, to remedy racial gerrymandering or vote dilution, someone must draw a new map. I can find no explanation why that \u2018someone\u2019 can be a federal court [and not the state legislature],\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Thomas went on to say that the Supreme Court\u2019s jurisprudence in redistricting matters \u2018puts States in a lose-lose situation.\u2019<\/p>\n
He referenced the Court\u2019s decision last term that ruled in favor of Black voters in Alabama challenging the state\u2019s GOP-friendly congressional map, which the court\u2019s majority found to be likely in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race.<\/p>\n
But Thomas and two of his colleagues dissented, saying, \u2018The question presented is whether [Section 2] of the Act, as amended, requires the State of Alabama to intentionally redraw its long-standing congressional districts so that Black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the Black share of the State\u2019s population. Section 2 demands no such thing, and, if it did, the Constitution would not permit it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Thomas, in his concurrence Thursday, argued that, \u2018Taken together, our precedents stand for the rule that States must consider race just enough in drawing districts.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018And, what \u2018just enough\u2019 means depends on a federal court\u2019s answers to judicially unanswerable questions about the proper way to apply the State\u2019s traditional districting principles, or about the groupwide preferences of racial minorities in the State,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018There is no density of minority voters that this Court\u2019s jurisprudence cannot turn into a constitutional controversy. We have extracted years of litigation from every districting cycle, with little to show for it. The Court\u2019s involvement in congressional districting is unjustified and counterproductive,\u2019 he concluded. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Justice Clarence Thomas, in the court\u2019s latest decision upholding a GOP-drawn redistricting map in South Carolina, took aim at a key, decades-old civil rights decision, calling it an \u2018extravagant [use] of judicial power.\u2019\u00a0 On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with the Republican-led South Carolina legislature after it was challenged for alleged racial gerrymandering in drawing <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}