In 2005, when John Roberts was seeking to persuade the Senate that he should be confirmed as Chief Justice, he famously (and misleadingly) likened Supreme Court Justices to baseball umpires, simply calling balls and strikes. To use his analogy, last week's ruling on voter ID in Texas showed just how far the umpire will go to rig the game.
Earlier this month, district court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the voter ID law could not be enforced. Her careful consideration all of the evidence presented at trial led her to conclude that the Texas statute didn't simply have a racially discriminatory impact (as if that wasn't bad enough), but that state lawmakers had actually intended to make it harder to Latinos and African Americans to vote. She found that the law violated the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, and the 24th Amendment (prohibiting poll taxes).
Not surprisingly, Texas wants to enforce the law during this year's election, while its appeal is pending. After all, if a law designed to obstruct people of color from voting isn't allowed to be enforced during the election, then what's the point? Less than a week after Judge Ramos issued her ruling, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit granted Texas's request for a stay. The two George W. Bush-nominated judges on that panel wrote of the irreparable harm to Texas if its law were not enforced, with little concern about the irreparable harm to the law's targets if it were enforced.
So voting rights advocates asked the Supreme Court to vacate the appeals court's stay. But last week, over the dissent of at least three Justices, the Roberts Court denied that request, meaning that Texas can enforce the law during the current election. Although the Court did not provide its reasoning, they presumably believe that the state's interest in enforcing a law found to be intentionally discriminatory is greater than the interests of those targeted by the law.
What a terrible message the hard-right conservative judges are sending Latinos and African Americans: We just don't think your rights are important.
Using the baseball metaphor, even when the pitcher intentionally beans the batter, Umpire Roberts and his conservative colleagues will call it a strike. The umpire takes sides, and tough luck if you're on the wrong team.
But this isn't a baseball game, and Americans can do more than just boo from the stands: We can vote, and we can get our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and anyone else we know to vote. When we vote for Senate, we're picking the people who will vote on whether to confirm or block the next Supreme Court nominee. What better to way to prove to the Roberts Court that we all matter?