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John Roberts



  • The Voting Rights Act is in Real Trouble

    Since the 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court has held that states must create districts where minority voters have a reasonable chance of electing their candidate of choice. SCOTUS is poised to overthrow that standard, gutting another provision of the Voting Rights Act. 



  • Manchin and Sinema are Fulfilling John Roberts's Vision

    by Ronald Brownstein

    "Roberts, who served as a young clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and as a Justice Department assistant in the Reagan administration, has long expressed hostility to federal oversight of voting and election rules."



  • The Supreme Court Is Helping Republicans Rig Elections

    by Adam Serwer

    Historian Lawrence Goldstone supports the argument that today's Roberts Court is continuing the jurisprudence of the post-Reconstruction era by denying the racism of restrictions on voting even as nonwhite voters are disenfranchised. 



  • The Supreme Court’s Starring Role In Democracy’s Demise

    by Carol Anderson

    The Supreme Court today repeats the shameful actions of the courts in the 1890s, which gave judicial cover to state laws explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters, by accepting bad faith arguments that the laws in question were race-neutral. 



  • So Far Away from 1965

    by Julian Zelizer

    By the early 1980s, a new generation opposed to African American political participation was resurrecting the old bromide of “voter fraud” in what would eventually become a successful attack on the VRA.



  • Dana Milbank: Roberts’s Cynical Treatment of MLK in Voting Ruling

    Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post.The Roberts court chose a most cynical way to celebrate this summer’s 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s penultimate day in session before the Aug. 28 semi-centenary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the court’s conservative majority announced a 5 to 4 ruling that guts one of King’s greatest triumphs, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (The Roberts court weakened another of King’s triumphs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in a pair of 5-to-4 rulings on Monday.)