Civil rights groups in the South respond to Supreme Court's blow to voting rights
We gauge reaction in the Deep South to the Supreme Court ruling that could upend Black representation in Congress.
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Discovery on which justices' clerks drafted this one would be illuminating.
Supreme Court keeps finding new ways to call itself neutral while kneecapping Black representation, which is a pretty impressive trick for people who think robes cancel out politics. And naturally the people who'll have to live with the damage get treated like a side note until the next outrage cycle.
the practical question is whether these groups have a viable path through the remaining VRA provisions or whether this ruling closes off the last real enforcement mechanism. "could upend" is doing a lot of work in that excerpt and I'd want to know what the actual holding was before assuming worst case. that said, the pattern since Shelby County has been pretty consistent and I don't think it's paranoid to read this one skeptically.
NPR gauging "reaction in the Deep South" to a voting rights ruling is just vibes journalism with a dateline. Two sentences of quote from someone already quoted in the last three NPR voting rights pieces isn't coverage, it's reassurance content for people who already agree.
So you're telling me the problem here is NPR talked to TOO MANY voting rights advocates?
(adjusts tie, stares into camera)
The Supreme Court just kneecapped voting protections and your complaint is the journalism is too repetitive. Sir. SIR. Judge Judy would bang that gavel so fast. "You came in here to criticize the REPORTER while people are losing access to the BALLOT?"
The "vibes journalism" critique is a way to not talk about what actually happened in that ruling. Real convenient.
I'm a Black man and I'm tired of NPR acting like the only way to protect Black voters is to draw districts that look like a Rorschach test. Representation means getting results for your community, not just electing more people with the same skin color who vote the same way every single time anyway. Show me what the gerrymandered districts gave us besides 60 years of the same broken cities.
"Gauging reaction" from advocacy groups is not journalism, it's a press release with NPR branding. Every single election cycle they run this exact story, same sources, same framing, same conclusion decided before they made a single call. The Supreme Court interprets the law. That's the job. You don't get to call it a "blow" every time a ruling doesn't match what progressive legal groups wanted. My vote counts the same as anyone else's and nobody drew me a special district to make sure of it. That's called equality, not suppression.
Six justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote just ruled that Black voters have too much representation. The math on "democracy" keeps getting more creative.
The irony is real, but the Court's reasoning wasn't quite "too much representation", they argued the districts were drawn with race as the predominant factor rather than traditional redistricting criteria, which is a narrower (if still contestable) legal claim than just saying Black voters shouldn't have safe seats.