OPINION:
Democrats are in a pickle. Their gerrymandering edge may vanish, allowing at least a dozen congressional seats to fall into Republican hands. It all depends on what the Supreme Court does now that it has heard oral arguments again in a case tackling the legitimacy of the 1956 Voting Rights Act head-on.
This measure is a classic example of sneaky lawmakers concealing a sinister design beneath an innocuous title. The legislation offered judicial partisans the excuse they needed to combat “historic discrimination” by redrawing congressional district boundaries in ways that granted leftists a sizable electoral windfall.
Under its provisions, special interest groups can file lawsuits compelling the implementation of race-based redistricting targets. Louisiana officials reject this scheme because it violates the equal protection rights of its residents.
“Embedded within these express targets are racial stereotypes that this court has long criticized. They assume, for example, that a Black voter, simply because he is Black, must think like other Black voters, share the same interests, and prefer the same political candidates,” Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga argued Wednesday.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson inadvertently demonstrated how quickly this line of thinking devolves as she compared the Voting Rights Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so they don’t have equal access to the voting system — they’re disabled,” the justice said.
Louisiana’s Democratic districts aren’t crafted to suit recognizable geographic divisions; they are contorted and stretched diagonally across the center of the state solely to give one political party additional representation in Congress. Such districts were imposed on Louisiana as punishment for its segregationist past, but the state insists it’s time to move on.
“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution. It requires striking enough members of the majority race to sufficiently diminish their voting strength, and it requires drawing in enough minority members to sufficiently augment their voting strength,” Mr. Aguinaga said. “They have placed states in impossible situations where the only sure demand is more racial discrimination for more decades.”
The Bayou State was the home of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, but that organization faded into irrelevance long ago. The schools were desegregated in 1954. Anti-miscegenation decrees were abolished in the 1960s. How long must the state be punished for the sins of its fathers?
Those sins, in fact, were committed by the Democratic Party, which held exclusive control of Louisiana’s government from 1879 to 1975. Democrats shouldn’t continue to profit from their own misdeeds, but there’s no guarantee that the high court will do anything.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. prefers to steer away from controversy, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh hesitate to intervene. One of their votes is required to provide relief to Louisiana.
Fortunately, Justice Kavanaugh’s remarks suggest an openness to starting a new chapter: “Given history and given Congress’ action, the goal is making sure there have been sufficient remedies for the history of discrimination in the United States. We’ve seen that in the school desegregation context, in the college admissions context, and in a variety of contexts.”
Ending the gerrymandering wouldn’t be a mortal blow to the Democrats, but they would lose an undeserved advantage at a time when liberal policies are turning voters away in droves, especially young men. That’s why they’re worried.
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