Thomas: Courts Should Ignore Racist Gerrymandering

Slate reports:

The Supreme Court, he argued, should overrule every precedent that limits gerrymandering—including the landmark cases establishing “one person, one vote”—because it has no constitutional power to redraw maps in the first place. And he places much of the blame for the court’s allegedly illegitimate intrusion into redistricting on a surprising culprit: Brown v. Board of Education.

Brown was, of course, the 1954 decision holding that racial segregation in public education violates the equal protection clause. “The view of equity required to justify a judicial map-drawing power emerged only in the 1950s,” Thomas wrote. “The court’s impatience with the pace of desegregation caused by resistance to Brown v. Board of Education led us to approve extraordinary remedial measures.”

Read the full article. There’s much more.

Clarence Thomas declares:

•The 14th and 15th Amendments impose NO limit on states’ ability to draw openly racist electoral districts that disfavor Black Americans because of their skin color.
•Federal courts have no power to redraw such racist maps. https://t.co/Pf36vhIHCV

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 23, 2024

The Supreme Court just greenlighted racial gerrymandering. It didn’t go far enough for Clarence Thomas. https://t.co/U7lHY0dtMf

— Slate (@Slate) May 23, 2024

Clarence Thomas suggested that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, should not even consider gerrymandering cases in the future. That would have disastrous consequences for Black voters in the South.https://t.co/S2lWVTe1BT

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) May 23, 2024