Category Archives: Civil Rights

Judicial Roundup

By tmess2 | Published November 26, 2023

November has seen two big developments in the courts that are of political interest which unfortunately can be characterized as the bad and the ugly.

The bad comes to us from the Eighth Circuit.  Traditionally, the Eighth Circuit has been somewhat on the conservative side, but mostly within the mainstream of traditional conservative thought.  It’s current compositions (by appointing president) is one from Daddy Bush, five from Shrub, one from Obama, and four from Trump.  This past week, a panel of the Eighth Circuit issued an opinion in Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP vs. Arkansas Board of Apportionment.  If you could not tell from the title, this case is a challenge to redistricting in Arkansas under the Voting Rights Act.  The trial judge in the case was a Trump appointee, and, based on a theory currently making its way among the far right, the trial judge dismissed the case on the theory that only the Attorney General can bring a case under Section 2.  In an opinion written by one of the Trump appointees, the panel adopted that theory.  The Trump appointee was joined by a Shrub appointee.  The third judge (a Shrub appointee) dissented.

The basis of the theory of the majority is textualism gone amok.  Technically, there is no express provision in the Voting Rights Act saying that private individuals can challenge district lines.  And, if this were a case of first impression involving just Section 2 and Section 2 had been written today, this argument might make sense.  Currently, courts are very reluctant to infer new causes of action. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court Preview — October Term 2023 — Part 2

By tmess2 | Published September 17, 2023

Last week, we took a look at the cases that are set for argument in October and November.  This week, we look at the cases that have been accepted for argument, but have not yet been set for an argument date.  These cases will probably be heard in December or January.

The primary job of the Supreme Court (reflected in the criteria that it lists on its rules for what applicants need to demonstrate before the Supreme Court will accept review) is to assure that courts uniformly interpret and apply federal law.  As such, every case is important to some groups of people.  But the focus in these posts are on those cases which could have a political impact.

First on this list is Muldrow.  This case involves Title VII — the law barring discrimination based on race and gender in employment.  The issue in this case is “transfers.”  Basically, by transfer, we are talking about the reassignment of employees from one job to another job.  Generally, Title VII only applies to “adverse” actions.  As such, the issue is what type of damage/impact does the employee have to show.  At least the argument from the employer is that if the transfer is truly a lateral move with no impact on pay or promotion opportunity, then there is no discrimination.   Obviously, there are other things that impact what qualifies as a desirable job.  Here, the employer is a police department and the transfer is from a detective-type squad to a patrol squad.  Technically, the ranks are equal, but there are reasons why a detective squad is a preferred position.   Needless to say, this case could either indicate an approach to Title VII that would allow it to broadly apply to transfer decisions or an approach in which transfers to nominally equivalent positions will rarely implicate Title VII.  From a practical standpoint, there seems something wrong with an interpretation that would, for example, let an employer assign most women to a night shift and most men to a day shift on the theory that the positions are equivalent, but I would not put such a myopic view past some of the current justices. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court Preview — October Term 2023 — Part 1

By tmess2 | Published September 10, 2023

We are three weeks away from the First Monday in October which means that the Supreme Court will soon be back in session.  Putting to the side the continued questions about the ethical failings of certain ultra-conservative justices (who unfortunately would never be convicted by the Senate even in the unlikely event that the more ethically-challenged Republican caucus in the House would actually allow articles of impeachment to pass), that means time to look ahead to the politically-significant cases on this year’s docket.

For a brief refresher, during its annual term, the U.S. Supreme Court sits in seven argument sessions.  Each of these argument sessions lasts for two weeks.  After five of these argument sessions, the U.S. Supreme Court takes a two-week break (with longer breaks over the holidays and after the January argument session).   Typically, for ease of convenience, the sessions are referred to as the October, November, December, January, February, March, and April sessions even though some sessions will begin in one month and conclude in another month (like the November session this year which will begin on October 30).  During the argument session, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  If one of those days is a holiday, that day is skipped.  There is no firm rule (as the Supreme Court will make adjustments if the docket requires it), but a “full” docket will have two arguments in the morning on each day.  Subject to adjustment if a third party (usually the Solicitor General if a case involves a federal statute) is permitted to argue, the party that lost below gets thirty minutes to argue and answer questions followed by thirty minutes for the party that won below followed by a brief rebuttal argument by the party that lost below.

On the Friday before the argument session, the justices meet to review pending petitions for review and to finalize any opinions to be released the following week.  There are similar conferences on the Fridays on the weeks in which there are arguments at which the justices also discuss the arguments that were heard that week and take an initial vote on those cases which is used to assign a justice to write an opinion.  On the Mondays of argument week (and the Monday after the argument week), the Supreme Court releases on order list announcing the decision on pending petitions for review.   In the early part of the term, there might be a separate list announcing the cases accepted for review on Friday to give the parties additional time to start preparing their briefs (the written arguments on the case) as the time schedule gets rather tight for completing the briefs before the oral argument.  Because of those time limits on the written briefs, the January argument session is effectively the cut-off date for a case being heard during the term.  If review is granted after January, the case is held for the following term.  Thus, the cases that we are about to discuss are those that the Supreme Court granted review on between February and June.  (On rare occasions, as it did for one case this year, the Supreme Court may add a case during its summer recess, but the norm is that — other than emergency matters — the period between July 1 and October 1 is quiet.)  The cases that they will accept (some of which may be discussed in Part III of this preview) in the next several weeks will be argued in the second half of this term. Continue Reading...

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The Only Protected Class — White Evangelicals

By tmess2 | Published July 2, 2023

For the past several decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has been on a crusade to end the “special status” of minority groups.  While it is abundantly clear that the purpose of the Civil War Amendments and the various Civil Rights Acts were to help, first African-Americans, and then women, achieve equality, the current majority of the U.S. Supreme Court want to act as if the law requires a “color-blind” (and implicitly a “gender-blind”) approach in which any effort by the government (or private institutions) in taking steps to assure that minority and women have a chance at success will be struck down.   Simply put, African-Americans, Hispanics, and women are no longer going to benefit from a “most-favored nation” status in civil rights laws.  On the other hand, the favored group of the Republican Party (White evangelicals) are entitled to such status.

This week saw the new legal order exemplified in three opinions.

First, and most obvious, was the decision in “Students” for “Fair” Admissions, Inc, vs. President and Fellows of Harvard College.  While the outcome of the case is not surprising as an exercise in raw power by the six Republicans on the Supreme Court, the bottom line is the equal protection clause and Title VI ban any attempt to help African-Americans overcome centruries of discrimination by giving them a “plus” in consideration for spots at “selective” universities and professional schools.  The opinion does leave a limited exception in recognizing that these universities use essays as part of the admissions process and, of course, free speech would bar the government from implementing a ban on references to the racial background of the applicant in these essays.  The Supreme Court directs, however, that in considering these essays, admissions offices should solely consider how these essays reflect barriers that the applicant has overcome or other aspects of the applicant’s character.  Of course, nothing in the majority opinion bans giving a plus to “legacy” candidates even if legacy candidates will be primarily composed of wealthy whites.  The one positive aspect of these opinions is that, like with last year’s abortion decision, this decision costs Republicans their wedge issue.  For the past fifty years, affirmative action has placed minorities against those with lower levels of white privilege for the last spots in government program and kept both groups from focusing on the slots that were reserved for those with Privilege.  Whether, with affirmative action no longer around, the powers that be in the Republican Party can keep folks from taking a look at the preferences given to the children of alumni and wealth donors that take aways spots from both middle class whites and minorities who actually earned a slot at the top colleges will be a big question going forward. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court — Two Weeks to Go

By tmess2 | Published June 18, 2023

We are now down to two weeks left before the effective end of this year’s Supreme Court term.  (Officially, the term ends at the start of October when the next term begins.  But the Supreme Court usually issues all of its opinions before the Fourth of July and only handles emergency matters in July, August, and September.)  As was noted in the post two weeks ago, there are some unwritten rules regarding how the workload is distributed among the justices which makes it possible (not easy but possible) to speculate about who might have which cases.

One complicating factor in this year’s term (as discussed two weeks ago and last week) is that we do not know how many written opinions we are getting this term.  There are three ways that we could end up with fewer opinions:  1) in related cases, the Supreme Court could “consolidate” the cases and issue one opinion covering both cases (this normally happens before argument, but can happen when opinions are assigned); 2) in related cases, the Supreme Court could decide to issue a signed opinion in one case and an unsigned opinion in the other case; and 3) the Supreme Court can dismiss a case after argument.  We have already seen all three possibilities occur this term.  We could have up to eighteen opinions still to come this term.  At the present time, we know that we will have two opinion days this upcoming week.  In last week’s two opinion days, we only get five opinions, but we got six opinions on one day back in May.  My hunch says that we are likely looking at two or three opinion days the week of June 26, but the Supreme Court tends to keep that information closely held and it tends to not announce the last opinion day until the next-to-last opinion day.

How many opinions we have left matters because the Supreme Court tends to try to keep the workload balanced.  If we have eighteen opinions left, there will be fifty-six total opinions for the term which would mean that every justice would have six opinions with two justices getting seven opinions.  But it is possible that some of the remaining cases could have no opinion.  While, due to Justice Jackson recusing in the Harvard case, it is unlikely that the two Affirmative Action cases will be consolidated, it is easy to see a signed opinion in the North Carolina case and an unsigned opinion in the Harvard case.  We could see a consolidated opinion in the student loan forgiveness cases.  And everyone is expecting a dismissal in the North Carolina redistricting case. Continue Reading...

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A Partial Victory for Native Americans

By tmess2 | Published June 17, 2023

The history of the United States is full of broken promises to Native American.  For a rather long period of time (in a pattern repeated in other places like Canada and Australia), part of the attempt of the European settlers to eliminate Native Americans was a practice of, for all intents and purposes, kidnapping children and placing them either in boarding schools or adopting them out to White parents to be raised without any knowledge of their ancestral culture.

During the Civil Rights era, several steps were taken to remedy these past sins.  In part, the federal government strengthened the powers of tribal governments.  Congress also passed the Indian Child Welfare Act to prevent a repeat of the efforts of some groups to break the tribes by stealing their youngest members.  Of course, in the U.S. no law stays the same forever, and interest groups always try to push back against the laws that are on the books.  Ultimately, these disputes end up at the Supreme Court, and recent terms have seen an ever growing number of cases related to Native Americans.  This term was no different, and this week saw the U.S. Supreme Court decide two cases related to Native Americans.

The “minor” case — Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Suprerior Chipewa Indians vs. Coughlin — involved the intersection between tribal government and bankruptcy law.  Like other governments, sometimes an individual who owes money to a tribal government will enter bankruptcy.  If a person owes money to a private business, that business is only allowed to take further steps to collect its debt through the bankruptcy court.  In this case, the debtor tried to have the bankruptcy court enforce the stay against the tribe.  Normally, governments (including the tribes) have immunity from being sued, but the bankruptcy code contains some exceptions.  By a 7-1-1 vote, the Supreme Court found that tribal governments are inclcuded in the limited waiver of immunity contained in the bankruptcy code.  The two who did not join the majority opinion were Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch for very different reasons.  Justice Thomas agreed with the majority that the tribe lacked immunity from being sued because the tribe was engaged in “commerical” rather than “governmental” activity and, therefore, would not have had immunity even without the provision in the bankruptcy code waiving that immunity.  Justice Gorsuch, however, would have found no waiver of immunity.  In this case Justice Gorsuch continued his pattern of being one of the foremost defenders of the tribes on the Supreme Court.  While this case was a “loss” for the tribes, it was a loss because the Supreme Court treated tribal governments as being equal to other governments. Continue Reading...

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Voting Rights Act — A Glimmer of Hope

By tmess2 | Published June 11, 2023

On Thursday, the United Supreme Court issued its opinion in Allen v. Milligan,  a case in which Alabama voters challenged the state’s new congressional district lines under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  As people may remember, due to COVID and the resulting delay in the 2020 census, Alabama completed its redistricting process shortly before filing began.  Although the voters quickly filed their case, and the three-judge panel quickly heard the challenge and issued its decision, a 5-4 majority decided that any change caused by any new lines issued by the judges would be too close to the start of the election process (but that the legislation changing the lines was not) for the judge-drawn lines to be used in the 2022 election.  So the 2022 election was held under the new lines drawn by the legislature while the U.S. Supreme Court decided whether those lines were valid.  In its ruling this week, five justices (with Justice Kavanaugh switching sides and Justice Jackson replacing Justice Breyer) upheld the trial court ruling.

To start with the legal considerations, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bars any voting practice or procedure that causes a protected group to “have less opportunity than other” groups “to elect representatives of their choice.”  While Section 2 also contains language disavowing an express requirement of proportionality, previous cases have found that Section 2 applies to redistricting and that it requires those bodies charged with redistricting to consider whether the maps give sufficiently large racial and ethnic groups a fair shot at electing a proportionate number of members.  Basically, this is done by drawing either “minority influence” districts (in which minorities are a large enough percentage of the voters that they can form a majority by aligning with like-minded non-minority voters) and “minority majority” districts. (in which the minority group is over 50% of the likely voters).

The current language in Section 2 was adopted in the early 1980s.  The first major case applying Section 2 to redistricting devised a three-part test.  First, the voters needed to show that minority voters are sufficiently concentrated that there is a reasonable map which would give them an additional minority influence or minority majority district.  In equal protection cases, the Supreme Court has made clear that maps that grossly violate traditional considerations to force geographically dispersed minority enclaves into the same district are forbidden.  Second, the voters must show that the minority group is politically cohesive.  In other words, that a significant majority sees itself as one group and tend to support the same type of candidate.  (For example, it might be harder to show that Asian voters are a group but easier to show that Vietnamese voters are a group.)  Third, the voters must show that the majority group (almost always white voters) will oppose the candidate supported by the minority group.   In other words, the last two parts require showing that racialized voting is still common in the jurisdiction. Continue Reading...

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Quick Hit — Redistricting and Voting Rights Act

By tmess2 | Published June 8, 2023

Today’s Supreme Court opinions included a 5-4 decision affirming a preliminary judgment invaidating the Alabama Congressional Districts under the Voting Rights Act.  We will have a more detailed analysis of the decision this weekend.  But the quick hit is that this decision will probably result in new lines in Alabama and Louisiana which will include a second African-American majority district in both states.

This decision partially offsets the impact of the weird, blatantly partisan, decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court to revert back to the original map after originally striking that map down, and New York might try to draw a new set of lines.  Thus, the state of play for the House is still up to further legislation action this fall.  But, today was a good day for a more representative House.

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The Supreme Court — Faux Originalism and the Reactionary Ascendency

By tmess2 | Published June 26, 2022

This is a hard week to post about.  There were three opinion days this week.  And each one featured a new decision that ripped at the fabric of modern society and featured a rewriting of history in the service of originalism to allow the reactionary members of the court to push through an agenda that lacks electoral support based on a misreading of the Constitution.

Tuesday started off the week with Carson vs. Makin, the Maine school voucher case.   Traditionally, there have been two prongs to the Free Exercise Clause — one prong involves the power to follow one’s religious beliefs without penalty and the other prong involves discrimination based on religion.  Posed against the Free Exercise Clause is the Establishment Clause which forbids the government from establishing an official religion or religions.  Traditionally, the big fights have been in the “no penalty” prong.

On the penalizing religion prong, the battle has always been the reasonableness of the proposed accommodations measured against the significance of the government interest.  And in the late 1980s, after one of the low points of religious freedom in which Justice Scalia basically limited this prong to the right to have beliefs without penalty for those beliefs (but no right to act on those beliefs), Congress overreacted by enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which went to the other extreme.  The RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause are on the verge of being interpreted as allowing people to claim religious exemptions from civil rights laws.  And we are likely to see another case in this prong later this week allowing a coach at a public school to pray publicly while on the job at a school function. Continue Reading...

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The Supreme Court and Voting Rights

By tmess2 | Published February 13, 2022

Parties seeking to challenge a new law have to make a choice between filing a case in federal court (assuming that they have a federal constitutional claim) and filing in state court.  Unless you have a favorable state Supreme Court, the usual tendency is to file in federal court.  However, it is becoming very clear that, if you are challenging an illegal redistricting plan, you really have to file in state court as the U.S. Supreme Court will not be give any assistance to plaintiffs.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court had what should have been a no-brainer.  When faced with a challenge to the Alabama district lines under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the three-judge panel issued a lengthy order which included detailed analysis of the evidence and tracked the governing precedent under Section 2.  Under the existing law (and the plain language of Section 2), the Alabama maps were and are illegal.  Under the legal standards governing a stay (which takes into account the merits and the interests of the parties), there was no basis for a stay.  The Supreme Court should have denied the stay and summarily affirmed the judgment.

But that’s not what the Supreme Court did,   By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court issued the stay and put the case on the argument docket for the fall.  Because there is no requirement for opinions on stays, we only know the reasoning of some of the justices.  And what we do know gives a strong hint that the Voting Rights Act is effectively dead. Continue Reading...

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