Supreme court: Alabama discriminated against Black voters
In the biggest ruling of the day so far, the court’s liberal justices have joined chief justice John Roberts in calling Alabama’s Republican redrawn electoral maps as “discriminatory”. It’s a big win for voting rights advocates.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with Roberts, and conservative Brett Kavanaugh joined most of the ruling.
Alabama discriminated against Black voters when it drew its seven congressional districts last year. The ruling in Allen v Milligan means that Alabama will have to draw its congressional map to include a second majority-Black district.
Black voters currently comprise a majority of the voting age population in just one district, despite making up a quarter of the state’s population.
And read my colleague Sam Levine’s report here:
Key events
Scalise caught up in hardline Republicans’ feud with McCarthy
While we’ve been focusing on the supreme court this morning, we’ve also been watching developments in the House of Representatives. Hardline Republicans have effectively paralyzed the chamber because they’re unhappy at speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal with Democrats that raised the US debt ceiling.
The spat appears to have widened to envelop No 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who appears not too happy himself at his boss’s conduct, Punchbowl reports.
According to the site, which spoke to Scalise late yesterday, he was left out of negotiations over the deal itself, which 71 Republicans voted against, and the horse trading with the hardliners that resulted in McCarthy finally winning the gavel after a marathon 15 rounds of voting back in January.
Here’s what Scalise told Punchbowl:
I don’t know what the promises were. I wasn’t part of that… so I still don’t know what those agreements were. Whatever they are, [conservatives] feel that the agreements were broken. That’s got to get resolved. Hopefully it does.
It doesn’t present a picture of harmony between the chamber’s top two Republicans, which the rightwingers might try to exploit as they continue to keep the House at an impasse. All voting has been postponed until next week.
“You’ve got a small group of people who are pissed off that are keeping the House of Representatives from functioning,” Arkansas Republican representative Steve Womack said.
“This is insane. This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave, and frankly, I think there will be a political cost to it.”
Read more:
There are no more supreme court decisions to come today, leaving about two dozen cases still to be resolved in the final weeks of the session, which is scheduled to end later this month. The next “decision day” will be next Thursday, 15 June.
Conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh joining his liberal colleagues, and the chief justice John Roberts, in the voting rights ruling condemning Alabama, is raising eyebrows.
Kavanaugh was the deciding voice in the surprising 5-4 ruling that’s being seen as a huge victory for the Voting Rights Act (VRA).
Kavanaugh agreed that Alabama’s drawing of seven congressional districts last year, largely affecting Black voters, was a violation of Section 2 of the act. According to Scotusblog, he says courts should “generally not overrule statutes – that’s for Congress to do”.
Unsurprisingly, the other conservative judges Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, dissented.
Gorsuch was the most vocal, declaring that the decision “unnecessarily sets the VRA on a perilous and unfortunate path”.
The case reached the supreme court after a three-judge federal court panel blocked the Republican-drawn map in 2022 as a “substantially likely” violation of Section 2 and ordered an additional district where Black voters make up “a voting-age majority or something quite close to it”.
The ruling bucks recent supreme court trends in voting rights cases involving race, Reuters reports.
In 2013 it ruled in another Alabama to strike down determining which states with histories of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.
In a 2021 ruling it endorsed Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, making it harder to prove violations under Section 2.
Supreme court: Alabama discriminated against Black voters
In the biggest ruling of the day so far, the court’s liberal justices have joined chief justice John Roberts in calling Alabama’s Republican redrawn electoral maps as “discriminatory”. It’s a big win for voting rights advocates.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with Roberts, and conservative Brett Kavanaugh joined most of the ruling.
Alabama discriminated against Black voters when it drew its seven congressional districts last year. The ruling in Allen v Milligan means that Alabama will have to draw its congressional map to include a second majority-Black district.
Black voters currently comprise a majority of the voting age population in just one district, despite making up a quarter of the state’s population.
And read my colleague Sam Levine’s report here:
Whisky, and dog chew toys resembling iconic bottles of Jack Daniels, is on the menu as the second ruling of the day.
The whisky maker alleged that the dog toy maker, VIP Products, both “infringed and diluted its trademark”.
The court says that the infringement question “is the more substantial,” according to justice Elena Kagan. Her ruling, supported by all justices, says that the court of appeals used the wrong inquiry when the accused infringer used a trademark as a trademark, and send it back to the lower court for another look.
“That kind of use,” Kagan writes, “falls within the heartland of trademark law, and does not receive special protection.”
Here’s the formal ruling on that.
Supreme court hands down first decision of the day, on nursing home reform
It’s just after 10am ET, and the first of today’s decisions from the supreme court has been handed down. First up is from the newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson and a relatively minor case about nursing home reform.
It’s the case of Health & Hospital Corp of Marion County v Talevski. The decision is 7-2, with justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
The question before the court is whether nursing home residents can go to court to vindicate rights under the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, the Scotusblog reports. The answer is yes.
There are 27 cases still to be decided by the supreme court, long-time panel watcher and former editor of Scotusblog Amy Howe says on her website.
She offers brief summaries of all of them, “including high-profile cases involving the use of race in college admissions, voting rights, election law, and the tension between legal protections for LGBTQ people and the rights of business owners who oppose same-sex marriage”.
You can read Howe’s summaries here.
Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who led the Christian Coalition and ran for president as a Republican, has died at 93.
The Christian Broadcasting Network announced his death in a short Twitter post this morning. No cause was given.
With great sadness, we announce that Dr. M.G. “Pat” Robertson has gone home to be with his Lord and Savior today, June 8, 2023. Thank you for your prayers for the Robertson family and the ministry of CBN at this time. For more details on Pat’s life and legacy, visit… pic.twitter.com/vxbvrNxEG8
— CBN News (@CBNNews) June 8, 2023
Robertson’s enterprises also included Regent University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia Beach; the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the first amendment rights of religious people; and Operation Blessing, an international humanitarian organization.
But for more than half a century, Robertson was a familiar presence in American living rooms, known for his 700 Club television show, and in later years, his televised pronouncements of God’s judgment on America for everything from homosexuality to the teaching of evolution.
Read the full story:
Supreme court to hand down more rulings
After a relatively subdued opening to “decision season” one week ago, rulings from supreme court justices are expected to start dropping again this morning within the hour. We could see consequential decisions regarding affirmative action, LGBTQ+ equality and the future of Native American tribes.
As my colleague Ed Pilkington wrote in a preview, it’s the final nail-biting month of the panel’s 2022-3 term and its decisions could transform critical areas of public life.
It comes amid ethics scandals and plummeting public confidence in the court, including calls for one of conservative members, Clarence Thomas, to resign. Yet as Ed writes: “The six rightwing justices who command a supermajority on the nine-seat bench are still expected to push at the limits of constitutional law in the pursuit of their ideological goals.”
One of the decisions relates to the pair of challenges to the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Should the supermajority strike down affirmative action it would overturn 50 years of established practice – a chilling echo of its evisceration of half a century of settled law on abortion.
Please stick with us for supreme court developments as they happen. Meanwhile, while we wait, you can read Ed Pilkington’s preview here:
Good morning US politics blog readers! It’s opinion day (again) at the supreme court, and justices could start handing down rulings at 10am on matters of deep consequence to the nation.
We’re waiting for decisions in cases regarding affirmative action, LGBTQ+ equality and the future of Native American tribes, but as with the panel’s first opinions day of the session one week ago, we never know exactly which ones we’re going to get, or when.
Last week, the justices gave us only three comparatively minor rulings, including one affecting striking labor unions. We’ll bring you whatever’s in store today as it happens.
Elsewhere in US politics, it’s shaping up to be a lively day:
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The House of Representatives has been paralyzed by Republican hardliners’ revolt against speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal made with Democrats to lift the debt ceiling.
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An indictment could be coming soon for Donald Trump after the justice department informed his lawyers that the former president was the “target” of their investigation into the improper handling of classified documents.
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There’s reaction to former vice-president Mike Pence’s campaign launch for the Republican presidential nomination, and his subsequent appearance in a CNN town hall pretty much dominated by talk of Trump and his legal woes.
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Joe Biden welcomes UK prime minister Rishi Sunak to the White House for bilateral talks. The two leaders will give a lunchtime press conference.
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And influential religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, who turned the Christian Broadcasting Network into a political powerhouse, and who once ran for president as a Republican, has died aged 93.
