{"id":73283,"date":"2026-05-16T04:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T04:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/73283\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T04:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T04:38:16","slug":"alabama-order-further-weakens-john-roberts-claim-that-justices-arent-political-actors-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/73283\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama order further weakens John Roberts\u2019 claim that justices aren\u2019t \u2018political actors\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was hard to take Chief Justice John Roberts seriously when he said last week<\/a> that Supreme Court justices aren\u2019t \u201cpolitical actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not only because he made the remark coming off the court\u2019s latest kneecapping<\/a> of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, where the justices split 6-3 along the party lines of the presidents who appointed them, but also due to other recent rulings<\/a> in which the GOP-appointed majority delivered decisions that align with Republican political goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s latest election-related action on Monday night further weakened Roberts\u2019 claim of apoliticism.<\/p>\n

Splitting along those same party lines, the court granted an emergency request<\/a> from Alabama officials who sought to harness the Callais case to upend a district court ruling that deemed their desired congressional map racially discriminatory. The Supreme Court majority obliged, with an unsigned and unexplained one-paragraph order<\/a> vacating the district court\u2019s judgment and sending the case back for further consideration in light of Callais.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual for new Supreme Court rulings to prompt such orders for lower courts to revisit their decisions that subsequently conflict with new high court precedent. But there\u2019s more to the story here, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor\u2019s four-page dissent<\/a> for the three Democratic appointees pointed out.<\/p>\n

In arguing that there was \u201cno reason\u201d for the high court to intervene on Alabama\u2019s behalf, Sotomayor noted that the district court relied not only on the voting rights section the majority just gutted in Callais, but also on a finding that Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters under the Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,\u201d the justice wrote, leading her to deem Supreme Court intervention \u201cinappropriate.\u201d Joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor worried that the majority\u2019s move \u201cwill cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

She further recalled that the Supreme Court had previously sided against Alabama in a 2023 case, Allen v. Milligan. In that one, Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three Democratic appointees to form a majority in a surprise 5-4 ruling<\/a> that supported the district court\u2019s finding that the state\u2019s map likely violated the section of the Voting Rights Act now gutted by Callais.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Court\u2019s finding of racially discriminatory vote dilution is an inextricable, permanent feature of this case, and Alabama\u2019s willful decision to respond by entrenching rather than remedying that dilution is, as the District Court correctly recognized, evidence of discriminatory intent,\u201d Sotomayor wrote.<\/p>\n

On top of the intentional discrimination issue that separates this Alabama case from Callais, Sotomayor said it was inappropriate for the majority to intervene even if Callais were implicated. \u201cThat is because Alabama\u2019s congressional primary election is next week, and vacating the District Court\u2019s injunction will immediately replace the current map with Alabama\u2019s 2023 Redistricting Plan until the District Court acts, even though voting has already begun,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The 2023 Redistricting Plan map has only one \u201copportunity district\u201d for Black voters in the state to have a chance to elect a representative of their choice, as opposed to two such districts as required by the lower court and backed by the Supreme Court\u2019s earlier ruling.<\/p>\n

That is, even though Callais changed the law, that change didn\u2019t require the majority\u2019s urgent intervention on Alabama\u2019s behalf, because the state\u2019s map was deemed discriminatory for reasons that don\u2019t fully turn on Callais. Nonetheless, the majority chose to step in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court today unceremoniously discards the District Court\u2019s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,\u201d Sotomayor wrote.<\/p>\n

She emphasized that the high court\u2019s order doesn\u2019t end the litigation, because the district court can still decide how Callais affects the analysis. Of course, if the district court rules against the state again, then the Supreme Court could intervene on the state\u2019s behalf again, as the justices field litigation from states amid a nationwide redistricting war that, thanks in part to the Supreme Court, may turn in Republicans\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the court\u2019s latest order gives Republicans a win that isn\u2019t even mandated by the Callais ruling.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s the majority\u2019s response to the dissent\u2019s charge of an untoward intervention? As too often happens on the shadow docket<\/a>: nothing.<\/p>\n

In public remarks, justices have urged the public<\/a> to read their opinions<\/a> to understand their work. But this case is the latest example of only one side sharing its reasoning. If pressed to sum up that raw exercise of power in a word, \u201cpolitical\u201d is one way to put it.<\/p>\n

The post Alabama order further weakens John Roberts\u2019 claim that justices aren\u2019t \u2018political actors\u2019<\/a> appeared first on MS NOW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on ms.now<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was hard to take Chief Justice John Roberts seriously when he said last week that Supreme Court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[11464,30796,3197,29991,535,10523,35966,20295],"class_list":{"0":"post-73283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-john-roberts","8":"tag-alabama","9":"tag-callais","10":"tag-chief-justice-john-roberts","11":"tag-district-court","12":"tag-john-roberts","13":"tag-justice-sonia-sotomayor","14":"tag-political-actors","15":"tag-supreme-court-justices"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116582410357021639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}