| | Robert's majority opinion has the effect of sanctioning the passing of a law that violated the constitution and justifies that act saying, “exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate.”
Clearly those words came from his head, but where do we find anything like them in the constitution. Where does it say in the Constitution, "Ignore or override any of the Bill of Rights should there be exceptional conditions"?
The fact is that the portion of the voting rights act that denied sovereignty to some states, was punishing everyone in the state for the criminal acts of some. The states have a constitutional right to set their own election laws, so long as the laws don't violate state or federal constitutional provisions. When a state voting law is declared unconstitutional by a court, anyone who attempts to apply the law acquires civil and criminal liabilities - and should be punished. But to act extra-constitutionally AND in a way that takes rights away from every citizen of state is wrong. How many times as children were we told that simple truth, "Two wrongs don't equal a right"?
Because the degree that voter discrimination was deeply entrenched in some Southern states at an earlier time, should not have been a call for violating the constitution, but for harsher and more consistent prosecution of those who attempted to deny blacks their civil rights.
As a side issue, the use of voter turnout statistics as definitive evidence of guilt is nonsense. They can only be a starting point, at best, in a search for causal elements of voter discrimination that once found, must stand on their own.
Were that act continued it would not only be punishing those who are innocent, but those whose only relationship to the original crime is that they live in the same state, generations later, than those who committed the crimes. Should we punish everyone South of the Mason-Dixon line for living in a state whose earlier generations had among them slave-holders?
I'm glad they struck down the current coverage formula, but I can't understand what is wrong with them that they don't see that it is a unconstitutional remedy to have any such formula.
Justice Thomas comes closer to hitting the mark. And again, he seems to be the only justice that really grasps the constitution and its place in our republic.
Ginsburg, Breyer, Sootomayor and Kagan again show us why they should not be sitting on the bench. With typical Progressive aplomb they find no shame in calling for any means at all... justified by the end. And being progressives they will always see racism everywhere and make it the end to which anything, except equality under the law, can be considered as a means.
The heart of the case before the court is the constitutionality of sections of the voting rights act. Here is how the dissenters address that issue: "The question before the Court is whether Congress had the authority under the Constitution to act as it did. In answering this question, the Court does not write on a clean slate. It is well established that Congress’ judgment regarding exercise of its power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments warrants substantial deference." That's it, folks. This group decided that somewhere in the word "deference" one can find constitutionality that otherwise isn't there. It is as if their purpose is to explain why the constitution doesn't really mean what it says or need to be followed.
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