Thread by @HMAesq

I hope everyone is paying more attention to the health of our democracy in this administration. Today's 2 decisions from the #SupremeCourt have one thing in common: the fight to erase minority communities' political power will continue.

In Dept of Commerce v NY, #SCOTUS kept the #citizenship question on #Census2020 barred, for now.

In Rucho v. Common Cause, SCOTUS threw up its hands and said it couldn't decide partisan gerrymandering cases - allowing the devious process to continue.

The Sec of Commerce (who heads @uscensusbureau) thought it was worth the risk to not count immigrants fearful of responding to a #censuscitizenship question.

The Court, of course, didn't think much of any of his stated justifications, finding them "contrived" and pretextual.

When the government failed to produce nearly 12,000 pages of documents that told the history of his consideration of the citizenship question, only releasing them under Court order, it's painfully apparent they've been disingenuous, hiding the real reason for the question.

Reinstatement of the citizenship question goes back decades. The white nationalist group @FAIRImmigration whose founder's papers I sued to unseal sued for a citizenship question on the 1980 census. They got crushed.

law.justia.com/cases/federal/…

It's the same we saw with the #MuslimBan: Giuliani said so, brazenly, on national TV: Trump asked him how to ban Muslims legally.

It's the same with #DACA revocation. After years of litigation, the only thing illegal about revoking DACA was how the government tried to revoke it.

Noticing a pattern here? Incompetent ideologues come in with an agenda to erase a community, and come up with facepalm-inducing "neutral" reasons afterward to justify it. Eventually, as with the Muslim Ban, they figure out how, but not without losing (badly) first.

On the citizenship census case, the standard of review was very narrow, meaning the government had to screw up very badly in order to lose. And they lost.

Bigly.

All justices agreed gerrymandering is a threat to our democracy. But despite rulings on such cases for decades, this time, right when our institutions are under attack by an ideological regime, the Court said it didn't have a tool to fix it. "Why can't we?" lamented the dissent.

For shame. Such an abdication of their duty. The dissent pulled no punches:

As a person of color, the message from this administration has been clear: I'm not wanted here. The people I fight for as a lawyer aren't wanted here. The people I worship with aren't wanted here. And while the census citizenship case is a sign of relief, it's temporary.

With a remand, it's still possible for the Bureau to come up with some passing justification. Decades of advocacy behind the citizenship census question aren't going to fizzle away.

The feeling of being erased is putrid and repulsive. If segregation is inherently unequal, so is disparate impact on minority communities. That the disparity exists is reason enough to fix it.

So - vote. Not on partisan lines. Just vote for what's right.