How Normie Pundits Paved the Way for the Supreme Court Voting Rights Disaster
The article argues that decades of focus on partisan polarization as the primary threat to American democracy have inadvertently enabled the Supreme Court's recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which weakens the Voting Rights Act by treating racial and partisan polarization as mutually exclusive. By elevating polarization as the central political problem, liberal and moderate thinkers helped create a framework that allows racial gerrymandering to be rebranded as partisan politics. This intellectual shift has effectively undermined legal protections against racial vote dilution.
- ▪In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruled that racial polarization cannot be considered under the Voting Rights Act if a district is already polarized along party lines.
- ▪The decision allows racially discriminatory redistricting to be justified as partisan gerrymandering, especially in a context where Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats and White voters Republicans.
- ▪The court's methodology incorrectly treats race and party affiliation as independent variables, ignoring that race strongly influences partisan alignment due to historical and systemic factors.
- ▪Initiatives like Duke’s Polarization Lab, Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative, and Ezra Klein’s book 'Why We’re Polarized' reflect a widespread intellectual focus on polarization over structural racism.
- ▪The article compares controlling for partisanship in racial gerrymandering cases to dismissing gender discrimination by controlling for job roles from which women were historically excluded.
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Jurisprudence How Normie Pundits Paved the Way for the Supreme Court Voting Rights Disaster By Jake Grumbach May 01, 202612:30 PM Polarization is not the problem. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images, SupremeCourt.gov, and Amazon. Copy Link Share Share Comment Copy Link Share Share Comment Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. For two decades, a certain kind of American political thinker has insisted they know the real problem. Authoritarianism, oligarchy, and racism were symptoms rather than causes.
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