These racial inequities did not go unnoticed by the Black and Latino voters of Richardson. And yet, Richardson’s school board remained persistently white for one reason: the district’s voting practices. While white students constituted a minority in the district’s schools, white voters still comprised a majority of the district’s population. These demographics, combined with an […]
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To that end, Congress amended the VRA in 1982 to reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling and specifically prohibit laws that had a discriminatory effect, regardless of intent, under Section 2. The high court accepted Congress’s vote-dilution framework in the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles and laid out a multi-part test to determine when and how […]
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I am not so sure. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, the candidates with the policy agendas that would most help Black Americans pay for health care, afford college, and otherwise thrive were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, not Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Deval Patrick. Joe Biden’s administration prioritized policies to advance racial equality much […]
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Source: pepifoto / Getty Primary elections in Alabama and several other southern states became unnecessarily complicated after the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act last month. Alabama postponed the primary election in several districts so state legislators could move forward with implementing a map previously found to be racially gerrymandered. While it looked […]
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The Supreme Court put Black voting rights on the chopping block with its ruling on Callais v Louisiana. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was intended to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement, but that’s all changed after the Callais decision. In this week’s Le[e]gal Brief, attorney Lee Merritt breaks down what can be done […]
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Source: SAMUEL CORUM / Getty Another day, another southern state announcing its desire to bring back the days of Jim Crow. On Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called a special legislative session to draw a new congressional map. CBS News reports that Kemp signaled he would trigger a redistricting effort shortly after the Supreme Court […]
Read MoreA new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, takes a deep dive into the battery of corporations they call the “Low Wage 20”: 20 firms that currently employ 6.7 million people across the United States. The names are familiar—Amazon, Starbucks, FedEx, Walmart, and Tyson Foods are habitual malefactors—but their sins are growing […]
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A group of Louisiana voters filed a lawsuit last week to resume the election, but have not yet succeeded at having the executive order stayed by a court. The Supreme Court, for its part, does not seem interested in delaying the inevitable. Earlier this week, the justices voted to immediately issue the court’s mandate for […]
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Last week, the Supreme Court finished gutting the Voting Rights Act in its ruling on Louisiana v. Callais. While there’s normally a 32-day period between when a ruling is announced and when it’s formally passed down, the Supreme Court ruled that redistricting can begin immediately, sparking a fierce back-and-forth between Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji […]
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Some larger states also used what were known as “plural districts.” Under this method, a single district would elect the top two candidates to the House on a general ticket. Some states, like New York and Pennsylvania, mixed plural districts in urban areas with single-member districts for rural ones. Others, like New Jersey, divided themselves […]
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Alito claimed that he wasn’t simply reintroducing a discriminatory-intent test in his opinion, but it was not convincing. “The dissent states over and over again that our decision requires a Section 2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent,” he wrote, referring to Kagan’s dissent. When a discriminatory effect is shown, he continued, plaintiffs must then show […]
Read More Alito claimed that he wasn’t simply reintroducing a discriminatory-intent test in his opinion, but it was not convincing. “The dissent states over and over again that our decision requires a Section 2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent,” he wrote, referring to Kagan’s dissent. When a discriminatory effect is shown, he continued, plaintiffs must then show […]
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