Thread by @LemieuxLGM

In Shelby County, Roberts defended his (indefensible) decision to strike down Section 4 by noting that Section 2 is still in effect. In a bait-and-switch anyone could see coming, the Court has now effectively made Section 2 a nullity: nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

One thing Kagan's dissent communicates very effectively is that Alito and the 5 other Republican justices are engaged in an act of nullification here. He doesn't like the choice Congress made to ban voting restrictions with a disparate impact, so he refuses to enforce the law:

While these vote suppression measures affect a relatively small number of voters, 1)elections -- including AZ's most recent presidential election! -- are often decided by small margins, and 2)there is no "must effect a significant percentage of voters" qualification in the VRA

I'm writing a paper about this, but one lesson here is that it's a mistake to conflate judicial *power* with judicial *review.* Statutory interpretation cases like Abbott and Brnovich have done as much or more damage to the VRA as Shelby County. It's a really serious problem.

Congress amended the VRA in 1982 PRECISELY TO FORECLOSE ALITO'S "INTERPRETATION" OF THE STATUTE, as will as to forbid exactly what Arizona did. Ultimately the only cure for bad faith is to have the median vote of the Supreme Court not be held by a neoconfederate.