Is Kavanaugh standing back and standing by?
The GOP loves a twofer, or even a threefer. Political maneuvering some might call strategic might less flatteringly be called sneaky or outright dishonest. Diabolical is not out of the running.
Donald Trump withholds final payments to subcontractors, for example, just enough that court costs make it a losing proposition for a subcontractor to take him to court to recover what he owes. Or Trump plays delay, delay, delay when he finds himself in court holding a losing hand.
Gerrymandering cases are another example. GOP legislatures draw district maps patently illegal under the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Democrats and aligned groups take them to court, win, and judges orders new maps. Then GOP legislators draw a second set of unacceptably gerrymandered maps, and the exasperated court appoints a special master to draw them instead. It happened in North Carolina. Or the GOP-led legislature might simply defy the courts until there is no time left before the next election to implement new maps. Something like what happened in Ohio.
Or in the case of Alabama, that maneuver is where dark money meets hidden agenda.
The Alabama Political Reporter (APR) offers a “twofer” explanation for Alabama Republicans’ defying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama draw a second majority Black congressional district. Leonard Leo, the “hidden architect of the Supreme Court,” is allegedly involved:
APR’s reporting shows the extent to which Alabama’s calculation to defy the Supreme Court was made not simply by state legislators in Alabama but has been driven by nationally connected political operatives at the center of the well-documented right-wing effort to reshape the composition and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and to overturn the remaining key protections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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As APR reported on July 27, Alabama lawmakers working in conjunction with state Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office and Washington D.C. lawyers had “intelligence” that Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who voted with the majority in Milligan just weeks ago to order the new maps under the statutory language — is open to rehearing the case as a constitutional challenge to the validity of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The Alabama government’s briefs before the three-judge panel in September referenced a concurring opinion by Kavanaugh that questioned whether “race-based redistricting” can “extend indefinitely into the future.” Alabama further relied on arguments — also rejected by the U.S. District Court — that a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision this same term ending affirmative action in college admissions (called Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ) compels the Court to find that a state’s use of a map in which “race predominates” now violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. As in Milligan, Kavanaugh filed a concurrence in Students for Fair Admissions, emphasizing the potential for time limits on race-related policies.
Having gutted Section 5 (pre-clearance) in Shelby (2013), the right is now gunning for Section 2 (ban on discrimination on the basis of race, color or minority status).
APR’s Bill Britt writes, “The tangled web of previously unreported ties centers around Marshall, Alabama Solicitor General Edmond LaCour — dubbed “the architect behind Alabama’s voting rights defiance” — and the D.C.-area law firm Consovoy McCarthy, the firm founded by William Consovoy, a now-deceased former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who represented Shelby County in Shelby County v. Holder.” He maps out a web of connections between LaCour and his wife, the D.C. law firm, Leo, “the Catholic far-right,” and Kavanaugh.
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos cautions:
None of this proves that Kavanaugh is involved in the effort to allow Alabama’s racist gerrymander and effectively gut the Voting Rights Act; that’s resting on that supposed “intelligence” that Alabama Political Reporter sources assert. What is clear is that strands of Leo’s web of dark money are at work here, with the goal of eradicating the scraps of the VRA that still exist. There’s no denying that Kavanaugh owes his lifetime appointment on the court to that network.
Alabama joined forces with Leo’s team to file this as an emergency petition, one that’s decided on the shadow docket. They want the Supreme Court to blow up the VRA behind closed doors—again.
MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” interviewed Britt Monday night.
“I cannot say with any certainty that Justice Kavanaugh will join in the scheme but when you look at the bedfellows it is an awfully crowded queen-size bed.” –@BillBritt on the Alabama GOP reportedly trying to force the Supreme Court to strike down Voting Rights Act. #TheReidOut pic.twitter.com/5ZnMUfONT5
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) September 19, 2023
What has long been clear is that “an authoritarian minority,” its political and cultural preeminence threatened by an expanding multicultural, secularizing society, is bent on preventing further slippage in its role as apex dominator. However many thumbs it must apply to the scales of fairness, so be it.