Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson just dropped a comparison during a heated hearing that’s raising eyebrows across the political spectrum.
In a recent Supreme Court session on the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a case known as Louisiana v. Callais took center stage, sparking debate over whether Louisiana’s congressional map, with two majority-black districts, violates constitutional protections against racial gerrymandering.
The hearing tackled heavy questions about the 14th and 15th Amendments, as Breitbart reports.
The debate is specifically focused on whether the map’s design amounts to unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering as claimed by the plaintiffs.
Enter Justice Jackson, who decided to frame the issue with an analogy that’s got conservatives scratching their heads.
Jackson likened the challenges faced by black American voters to those encountered by Americans with physical disabilities.
Drawing on the Americans with Disabilities Act, she argued that remedial actions in civil rights law often address disparities without proving discriminatory intent, much like making buildings accessible regardless of a builder’s motives.
“Congress said, the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible,” Jackson stated during the hearing.
“I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here.”
She pushed further, questioning why voting rights remedies couldn’t follow a similar logic, addressing current disadvantages for minorities even if no explicit intent to discriminate exists.
“The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system,” Jackson argued.
She even used the term “disabled” to describe unequal processes, referencing a past Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley.
While her point aims at fairness, equating racial challenges to physical disabilities feels like a stretch to many.
The argument is widely viewed as muddying distinct issues with loaded language.
Lawyer Edward Greim, representing the opposition, wasn’t buying the comparison.
Greim counters that remedies under laws like the ADA don’t rely on assumptions or stereotypes, unlike some race-based voting fixes.
“It’s whether the remedy that relates to race involves stereotyping voters and making assumptions about their politics and their views and thoughts based on their race, and that’s the problem,” Greim asserted, pointing to a slippery slope in applying such logic to electoral maps.
His rebuttal hits a nerve for conservatives wary of policies that might pigeonhole individuals based on group identity rather than individual merit or behavior.
Justice Jackson pressed on, questioning whether racial disparities in voting access should simply be ignored if race-based remedies are off the table, a query that sounds noble but risks overcorrecting in ways that could divide more than unite.
Greim’s concern about stereotyping isn’t just legal jargon; it’s a reminder that good intentions can pave a path to policies that assume too much about people’s beliefs based on skin color, a notion that clashes with the colorblind ideal many conservatives hold dear.
While the debate in Louisiana v. Callais won’t settle overnight, it’s clear this case, and Jackson’s analogy, will fuel discussions about how far remedial action should go before it becomes another form of bias.
It’s something worth watching as the court deliberates on balancing equality with fairness.
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