“Just because voting may be inconvenient for some, doesn’t mean that access to voting is unequal. The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote.” Justice Samuel Alito
Make that make sense to me! The Supreme Court, in a recent ruling, tried to make “inconvenience” and “disparity in impact” mean the exact same thing as “equally open” and “equal opportunity.” Like some of their rulings in the recent past, they declared it’s okay to have a discriminatory and racist impact as long as you don’t say that’s what you intended to do out loud.
It would be nice to have been able to say this is an aberration, the result of a right-wing loaded court that could reverse itself over the pendulum of time. But this current Supreme Court, like every Supreme Court ever, exists to protect the interests of rich, white men. It has always been thus.
The very first Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay was a man ahead of his time when it came to enslaved people. Sure, he owned many that he inherited at birth. In 1799 as Governor, he passed a law leading to the gradual end of enslavement in New York, ensuring any child of an enslaved person would be born free. Before that, in 1786, he was the first President of the New York Manumission Society in New York, a position he held until he became Chief Justice in 1789. He ultimately resigned from the Supreme Court in 1795 to become New York’s second Governor.
John Jay owned at least seventeen enslaved people. He used them, rented some out, he allowed some to earn their freedom after several years of service. Some historians call him an abolitionist, suggesting they have redefined the word. He was ahead of the curve compared to most men of his time, but at no time did his Supreme Court or any other ever rule the enslavement of human beings unconstitutional until the Constitution itself was amended to ban enslavement.
The Jay court decided only four cases during his term, the most famous being Chisolm v Georgia which had nothing to do with slavery but everything to do with state’s rights. The Supreme Court decided the federal courts could review and overrule decisions at the state level, which caused an uproar and the immediate passage of the Eleventh Amendment, which shifted power back to the states in most cases. Despite Jay’s aversion to enslavement, he and the Supreme Court did nothing to eliminate it during his term. He stood with other rich, white men in upholding it.
The fifth Chief Justice was Roger B. Taney, a bust of his likeness is still on display at the Capitol despite two votes by the House of Representatives to remove it. The court during his term had grown to nine rich, white men from the original six. Five members of the Taney court enslaved people, and their votes and comments, especially those of Taney, demonstrated what they thought of Black people:
“Every intelligent person whose life has been passed in a slaveholding State, and who has carefully observed the character and capacity of the African race, will see that a general and sudden emancipation would be absolute ruin to the Negroes, as well as to the white population.” Roger B Taney
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Roger B Taney
Taney wrote the opinion in the infamous Dred Scott v Sanford in which he went on to declare Black people were purposely overlooked by the Founders and never intended to be citizens:
“It is obvious that they [blacks] were not even in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when they were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a State in every other part of the Union.” Roger B Taney
The Supreme Court supported slavery, and it was aligned with the interest of rich, white men. Unlike America’s Presidents, we know twelve of the first fourteen Presidents enslaved people (everyone whose last name wasn’t Adams). We don’t know exactly how many Supreme Court justices owned slaves, just that several did. We do know they upheld the institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Besides denying the enslaved man Dred Scott his freedom, that decision also said the Supreme Court had no right to outlaw slavery in the territories. It wasn’t in the interest of rich, white men.
The Supreme Court has always taken the side of rich, white men. Before the infamous Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, which enshrined “separate but equal,” there was Hall v Decuir in 1877, which allowed Louisiana to ignore the law to defer to customs, including segregation. There may never have been Jim Crow laws had the Supreme Court not permitted segregation. A rich white man didn’t want to allow a Black woman to use a cabin reserved for whites though she was willing and able to pay. The Supreme Court sided with the steamboat captain.
It is in voting and civil rights where the Supreme Court has done its worst since its inception. Congress has occasionally seen fit to pass several voting rights acts and civil rights acts; each time, the Supreme Court either weakened or found unconstitutional. Plessy v. Ferguson allowed poll taxes and literacy tests. The Supreme Court did that.
With their latest ruling, combined with their gutting of the enforcement provision in 2013. The Supreme Court has rendered the Voting Rights Act of 1965 impotent. We see the results with forty-seven states currently seeking to enact voter suppression laws that will inhibit minority voting and youth in some cases. Lawsuits are working their way through the system, and inevitably the Supreme Court will have to decide how to protect the interests of rich white men. It’s what they do; it’s what they have always done.
The Supreme Court has come down in support of “partisan gerrymandering,” though they know it’s racial gerrymandering designed to empower the party of rich, white men.
“Partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the Court’s other four conservatives, wrote in the 5–4 Rucho v. Common Cause decision.
“Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.”
This isn’t John Jay or Roger B. Taney; it’s the current Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority repeating the age-old mantra of state’s rights, the clarion call for rich, white men. The most recent decision says to ignore the disparate impact these laws have on minorities. It’s “inconsequential,” which sums up how the Court has always felt about minority voting.
In a system where the Supreme Court decided corporations are people and can contribute unlimited, anonymous funds to elections, they also allow states to make it harder for minorities to vote. Shame on them!
To become a Supreme Court Justice, one must be selected by a President (all but one have been rich, white men) and approved by a committee and the full Senate, which have always been a wide majority of rich, white men. Nominees give interviews during which they satisfy committee members they will support their interests. If they fail to convince them, they have no shot at approval. Nominees that have been approved along the way have been accused of sexual harassment and assault, which didn’t prevent their confirmation. Heaven forbid they have a history of not supporting the causes of rich white men, though. They won’t have a shot.
It may be wrong to think of the Supreme Court as historically racist in the traditional sense of being anti-minority (though some of them certainly were). Look at them as being racist in terms of looking out for the interests of rich, white men. The ill effects felt by minorities are just the by-product of preferential treatment. Minorities are harmed, but it wasn’t the specific intent, so it’s okay. That’s America, and we have the Supreme Court to thank for it.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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