Supreme Court Drops the Other Shoe

The coming midterms in Arizona just became more critical.

In each election cycle, we are told that “this one is the most important.” It’s easy to be skeptical. But with the recent news from the Supreme Court, there really is a new wrinkle. And there are consequences for us all. In particular:

State elected offices just became even more critical

But this has been a long process.

In 2013, The Supreme Court severely damaged one of the signature achievements of the Civil Rights era, the Voting Rights Act (VRA)^[1]. In that decision, they ended an approach to prevent racial gerrymandering,  preclearance, which had required some states and local governments to obtain federal approval before changing election laws. But in that decision, they essentially said “if there are problems you can still rectify them”, using the second section of the VRA. 

And now the other shoe drops

Now they have essentially removed that form of recourse. While ostensibly leaving the law in place, they have removed the ability to exercise it based on results – if a state with 45% black residents leaves those residents with no opportunity to elect someone of their choosing, it’s OK if you can’t prove racist intent. And since the Supremes ruled that partisan gerrymandering is now OK (according to the 2019 decision Rucho v Common Cause), bad actors can always fall back to that explanation for a bad map.

Barring major changes by Congress, the Supreme Court is dead to us. And this means that critical guardrails for democracy may not be coming from the Federal Government, even if we are successful in our Congressional races in the fall.

What allows us to fight back? 

Federalism. Much is determined at the state level, especially elections and redistricting. If the Federal government is going to permit wrongdoing at the state level, they may also not be able to prevent us from doing the right thing.

But that will be dependent on our ability to convince the public in our states that the current generation of Republican lawmakers and statewide candidates are not trustworthy caretakers of the public interest. We need to do that. Here in Arizona, it is more essential than ever that we re-elect our main statewide officers, and just as importantly, attain Democratic majorities in the state legislature. While in principle, fairness in the electoral landscape is not a partisan goal, in the current reality, the Republican majority has proven to be an unworthy steward of the public’s interest. Legislation (including referrals to the ballot) are almost entirely done without significant input from Democrats, and in turn, without representation of many Arizonans.

So, a potentially nonpartisan goal, fair representation, will require an entirely partisan goal – preventing the Republicans from continuing their majority in the state legislature, and renewing the tenure of top Democrats holding the position of Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. Because failure to do all of that could mean the removal of all influence on our future from every minority group in the state, and slavish surrender to a federal government that has lost its way. The Republican state Senate President has already announced a potential suit to contest our current districts.

Democrats winning at the state and legislative district level will be our only defense from a reactionary Supreme Court and an insane federal executive.

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^[1] The Act was strengthened by later actions such the Amendments of 1982.