Perhaps Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., whose majority opinion proclaimed that there was no longer sufficient justification for federal oversight of states that not so long before had specialized in finding creative ways to keep black citizens from the polls? Not too likely, given that he invited and set up the Shelby County case with his opinion in a case back in 2009. Or Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who always seems most comfortable when, by his lights, he’s on the right side of history? Possibly -- but states’ rights sound a siren call for him that he has rarely resisted. Not Justice Antonin Scalia, who during the Shelby County argument mocked the fact that both houses of Congress had recently reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by overwhelming majorities -- thus proving, according to the justice, that Congress was in the grip of political correctness? Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.? Not a chance. Justice Clarence Thomas? Sigh.
Greenhouse got religious:
I’ve talked myself out of my thought experiment, but not out of some residual faith in the possibility of redemption. The Supreme Court now has a chance to set something right in the voting-rights area. On Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear a challenge to Wisconsin’s strict voter ID law, which a federal appeals court upheld last fall. It’s likely that the justices will add the case to their docket, given that a few weeks before Election Day, the court granted a stay of the appeals court’s decision (over the dissenting votes of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito).
(Last October, Greenhouse lamented the Court's "steady regression on race and its deregulatory hijacking of the First Amendment" and Justice Clarence Thomas's "full-steam-back-to-the-18th-century" approach to constitutional interpretation.)
After a long breakdown of Judge Richard Posner flip-flopping on a decision he wrote upholding Indiana's voter ID laws, Greenhouse linked the burden of obtaining photo identification to the racially inflammatory narrative that emerged from Ferguson, Mo. Never mind that one needs a photo ID to get a library card, drive a car, buy alcohol...Greenhouse painted the voter ID requirement as racist, linking it in admittedly "rabble-rousing" fashion to the racially-charged shooting of a teenager in Ferguson.
Last summer, as protests mounted around the country following the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., I thought about Shelby County, and the voter ID laws, and wondered when people would start protesting the systemic assault on the right to vote -- when people would connect the dots between voting and gaining control of the communities in which they live. I held back from writing such a column, however, out of concern that it would strike readers as either platitudinous or rabble-rousing.
But I have a sense now that those dots are getting connected. Not only was Selma’s 50th anniversary -- the real one, not my imaginary one of two years ago -- a stirring national event, but in Ferguson itself, residents are turning to the ballot box as the path to reform. I hope it’s not a fantasy to imagine that the Supreme Court -- yes, the Roberts court -- will seize the opportunity that the Wisconsin case provides to send a message different from the one it sent two years ago, an affirmative message the country now urgently needs to hear.
Greenhouse was right the first time: Her piece is both "platitudinous" and "rabble-rousing."
Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, pontificating from her regular perch at nytimes.com, unapologetically urged the conservative Supreme Court justices to embrace left-wing emotional and political symbolism on voting rights in Thursday's "The Supreme Court’s Identity Crisis on Voting Rights."