{"id":66675,"date":"2026-05-11T19:43:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/66675\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T19:43:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:43:18","slug":"by-barretts-own-definition-the-supreme-court-is-full-of-partisan-hacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/66675\/","title":{"rendered":"By Barrett\u2019s own definition, the Supreme Court is full of partisan hacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Justice John Roberts unfailingly insists<\/a> that he and his colleagues are not \u201cpolitical actors.\u201d But when the Supreme Court\u2019s six conservative justices recently voted to\u00a0effectively nullify<\/a>\u00a0a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act<\/a>, they indeed revealed themselves as guarantors of the Republican Party\u2019s national agenda.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take my word for it. No less an authority than Justice Amy Coney Barrett has described how to determine whether the justices are neutral arbiters of the law or political operatives in robes. The Republican-appointed super-majority has failed the test.<\/p>\n

Shortly after her confirmation to the Supreme Court, Barrett\u00a0spoke<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Louisville\u2019s\u00a0McConnell Center<\/a>, where she was introduced by Mitch McConnell himself, who was then the Republican Senate majority leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal today,\u201d Barrett\u00a0told her audience<\/a>, \u201cis to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.\u201d Her proposed method, she continued, is asking whether the \u201cdecision seems results-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRead the opinion,\u201d Barrett later explained in a talk<\/a>\u00a0at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and then decide whether it is \u201cdesigned to impose the policy preferences of the majority,\u201d or if it reads \u201clike it actually is an honest effort and persuasive effort, even if one you ultimately don\u2019t agree with,\u00a0to determine what the Constitution and precedent requires?\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrett got the test almost right; it should have been \u201cread the opinions,\u201d plural. <\/p>\n

Any smart judge can make a single opinion seem coherent and logical. It is only by comparing multiple opinions that a pattern of political favoritism can be seen to emerge. Do the decisions consistently follow what the \u201cprecedent requires,\u201d as Barrett puts it, or do they change course to reach political outcomes?<\/p>\n

When it comes to voting rights, we do not need to look far. Two Supreme Court cases, each decided by the right-wing majority, contradict one another. Unsurprisingly, both resulted in Republican electoral advantages.<\/p>\n

In the 2019 case\u00a0Rucho v. Common Cause<\/a>, the court declined to invalidate heavily gerrymandered congressional districts, clearly drawn to disadvantage one political party, on the theory that the issue of political apportionment is \u201cnonjusticiable,\u201d and thus beyond the authority of the Supreme Court to rectify.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the majority opinion, written by Roberts and joined by the other four conservatives then on the court, noted that \u201cexcessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust\u201d because it is \u201cincompatible with democratic principles.\u201d Moreover, the majority added, \u201cOur conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was then.<\/p>\n

Late last month, in\u00a0Louisiana v. Callais<\/a>, the same five justices, now reinforced by Barrett, bestowed a seal of approval on \u201clegitimate\u201d partisan gerrymandering, used as a reason to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district, mapped under the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

So in the space of seven years \u2014 which is not long in judicial time \u2014 the court\u2019s conservatives went from lamenting the injustice of partisan gerrymanders as unfortunately beyond their reach, to endorsing what they blithely\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca target partisan distribution of voters\u201d as a sacrosanct state prerogative.<\/p>\n

In a biting dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor,\u00a0observed that<\/a>\u00a0the majority had given \u201cpoliticians free rein to adopt partisan gerrymanders\u201d as \u201can excuse for stripping minority citizens of their voting rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as UCLA law professor Richard Hasen\u00a0put it<\/a>, \u201cthe odious practice has now become a defense in a voting rights case.\u201d<\/p>\n

It did not take long for Southern states to get the message. Within days, the governor of\u00a0Louisiana<\/a>\u00a0suspended a congressional primary, in which voting had already started, so that the Republican dominated legislature could purge a Black majority district from its electoral map.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Tennessee<\/a>, the Republican-controlled legislature carved the state\u2019s only majority-Black congressional district, centered in Memphis, into three slices, each one engulfed by a surrounding white district. The speaker of the Tennessee General Assembly\u00a0bragged<\/a>\u00a0that the new map, enabled by the Supreme Court\u2019s approval of partisan redistricting, is now \u201ccolorblind,\u201d which evidently means all white.<\/p>\n

Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi are said to have\u00a0similar<\/a>\u00a0proposals<\/a>\u00a0already in the works for this year, and Georgia for after 2026.<\/p>\n

There was a time when the Supreme Court rejected euphemisms and looked at the inequitable practices hidden by various obfuscations. Relatively antiseptic phrases such as \u201cseparate but equal<\/a>,\u201d \u201cracial integrity<\/a>\u201d and \u201cgrandfather clause<\/a>\u201d were eventually recognized as refined cover-ups for racism.<\/p>\n

We have evidently come full circle, with the Supreme Court itself ratifying a so-called color-blind rationale for eviscerating minority voting rights in a manner that had not been seen for more than 60 years.<\/p>\n

So yes, take Barrett\u2019s perceptive advice for identifying partisan hacks. Read the opinions and look for the political gerrymander through-line. Is Callais (written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Roberts) continuous with Rucho (written by Roberts and joined by Alito) on any discernable principle other than partisan advantage?<\/p>\n

An Emersonian\u00a0foolish consistency<\/a>\u00a0may well be the \u201chobgoblin of small minds,\u201d but that has not stopped the Supreme Court\u2019s conservatives from closely adhering to one constant objective: Make Republicans win.<\/p>\n

Steven\u00a0Lubet\u00a0is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

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