Supreme Court Divided On Voting Rights Act - Looks Grim

As in, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, passed to protect minority voting rights, that Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated for tirelessly before his murder.

That one.

The Supreme Court was reviewing it today, due to some racist claptrap about it from Shelby, County, Alabama.

You see, Section Five of the Voting Rights Act requires that 9 states, including Texas and mostly in the South, get federal approval before changing any voting laws or procedures.

This has several times prevented Texas from re-drawing its legislative districts so that areas of the state that are highly populated by minorities get carved up into tiny slivers and tacked on to areas filled with lots and lots of white people so that white people are always the majority.  Quite recently, in fact.  Also, quite recently, it kept that Voter ID bill from instituting an effective poll tax in Texas and other states.

But Justice Scalia called it a "racial entitlement" today and Chief Justice John Roberts asked if the government believed "the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North." 

Well, I hope the government believes that because, yes, the citizens in the South are more racist, overall, than the citizens in the North. This is evidenced by those gerrymandered redistricting plans that Southern states keep trying to have approved and the Voter ID laws they keep trying to pass, and the way they keep trying to cut early voting days, and the fact that repealing the Voting Rights Act was part of the Republican Party Platform in Texas and, oh, you know, the Klan.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority is either in on the racism or strangely clueless, however, because, Mamas - things are not looking good.  It sounds like Section 5 of the Act is on its way out and I am really, really scared of the regression that will cause.

I expect the whole push is mainly about, in addition to All The Southern Racism,  the fact that Republicans know that Texas is going purple and they have to stop it. Keeping minorities from voting is their only way to do that. (Other than having women reclassified as breeding cattle and they are working on that, too.)

The ruling is expected to be announced around June, as far as I could gather.