Clarence Thomas wants the Supreme Court to stop hearing cases on racist redistricting
Supreme Court conservatives argue that South Carolina Republicans did not discriminate against Black voters with gerrymandered congressional map
www.independent.co.uk The US Supreme Court has overturned a lower court’s decision that found South Carolina’s congressional maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to discriminate against Black voters.
The high court’s 6-3 decision on Thursday effectively gives state lawmakers a roadmap for discriminating against Black voters when drafting congressional district boundaries, as long as they can say they were targeting their party affiliation, not their race.
Writing alone in a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas appeared to argue that the nation’s high court should not be policing racial gerrymandering at all, going so far as to criticize the court’s decision in a landmark case ending segregation in the US as “extravagant.”
In its monumental 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court sought a “boundless view of equitable remedies” through “extravagant uses of judicial power” to end racist segregation, according to Justice Thomas.
