U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is complaining about fellow Justice Elena Kagan’s sharp criticism of him and his conservative allies over their decision in the Alabama redistricting case that reportedly disenfranchises black voters.
Kagan’s criticism of Kavanaugh came after the conservative-led Court’s decision to halt a lower court’s order requiring Alabama to redraw its congressional maps over claims it infringes on the rights of African American voters, according to Talking Points Memo.
“The conservative majority did not explain its reasoning in Monday’s order. Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write a concurring opinion, attempting to rebut Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent,” TCM reported.
Kagan’s blistering dissent squarely targetted Kavanaugh, arguing that the state’s attempts to defend the redistricting, which would group the majority of Black voters in one district, “seeks to ‘graft onto’ the Voting Rights Act ‘a new requirement, lacking any foundation in our precedent,’” TPM reported.
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In its case before the court, the state claims “that if a new map to craft two Black majority districts is to be drawn, it must be drawn without taking race into account as a priority — otherwise, the state claims, it would be an illegal racial gerrymander.”
However, The Trump-appointed judge argued otherwise:
“The stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law. The stay order is not a ruling on the merits, but instead simply stays the District Court’s injunction pending a ruling on the merits,” Kavanaugh insisted as he pivoted to express his disapproval of Kagan’s dissent.
“The principal dissent’s catchy but worn-out rhetoric about the ‘shadow docket’ is similarly off-target,” he said, according to TCM.
“Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others. It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election,” Kavanaugh wrote before claiming that his decision was not influenced by politics.
“Contrary to the dissent’s mistaken rhetoric, I take no position at this time on the ultimate merits of the parties’ underlying legal dispute. And I need not do so until the Court receives full briefing, holds oral argument, and engages in our usual extensive internal deliberations,” he wrote.
