The part of Samuel Alito’s speech that got my attention was the year he chose. Speaking to the Federalist Society, he warned that Congress could “turn off the lights at the Supreme Court.” Then he said that if judicial independence were lost, “the Constitution as adopted in 1789 will no longer be the same.” I heard that and thought about who had power in the country Alito was looking back to. Alito’s remarks
When the Constitution was signed in 1787, states set voting qualifications, and the electorate was overwhelmingly white and male. The Constitution counted enslaved people at three-fifths for apportionment, giving slaveholding states more seats in Congress while the people they enslaved had no vote. Under coverture, married women had little control over their own property. Native nations saw their lands taken, their treaties broken, and their people driven from their homes. That, too, is American history and tradition. National Archives on the Constitution · National Archives on Indian removal
Look at what this Court does with that history. Alito wrote Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade. His opinion asked whether the right to abortion was deeply rooted in American history. When you use the laws of an era in which women had almost no political power to decide what rights women have today, the men who wrote those laws get another vote. Read Dobbs
This year, Alito wrote the opinion striking down Louisiana’s map with a second majority-Black congressional district. The Court made it harder to challenge maps that dilute minority voting strength by requiring evidence that strongly points to intentional discrimination. A legislature can draw a map that leaves Black voters with less of a voice, and those voters now face a higher hurdle when they ask a court to do something about it. Read Louisiana v. Callais
That is what I see when I look at this MAGA Supreme Court. We spent generations making “We the People” mean more people. Alito is worried about what Congress might do to his Court. I’m worried about what his Court is already doing to us.
Where the six racist MAGA justices wants to take us back to, where we had slaves, women were chattel, and the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
