Federal appeals court deals a blow to Voting Rights Act, ruling that private plaintiffs can’t sue

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act, a decision that contradicts decades of precedent and could further erode protections under the landmark 1965 law.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis found that only the U.S. attorney general can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

The majority said other federal laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, make it clear when private groups can sue but said similar wording is not found in the voting law.

“When those details are missing, it is not our place to fill in the gaps, except when ‘text and structure’ require it,” U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras wrote for the majority in an opinion joined by Judge Raymond W. Gruender. Stras was nominated by former President Donald Trump and Gruender by former President George W. Bush.

The decision affirmed a lower judge’s decision to dismiss a case brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel after giving U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland five days to join the lawsuit.

Chief Judge Lavenski R. Smith noted in a dissenting opinion that federal courts across the country and the U.S. Supreme Court have considered numerous cases brought by private plaintiffs under Section 2. Smith said the court should follow “existing precedent that permits a judicial remedy” unless the Supreme Court or Congress decides differently.

Thank you for referencing that article Red Badger.

"Federal appeals court deals a blow to Voting Rights Act, ruling that private plaintiffs can’t sue [blah, blah, blah]"

As a side note to this thread, beware of vote-counting fraud as a consequence of political party-inspired, unconstitutional federal civil rights protections.

Consider that the always-incompetent (imo) Congress had unjustifiably based its first civil rights law on the 13th Amendment (13A; prohibits slavery).

Excerpted from 13A:

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted [emphasis added], shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Rep. John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had lamented that misguided Congress had based the Civil Rights Act of 1866 on 13A, simply because 13A doesn't reasonably give Congress the specific power to make broad civil rights laws.

"During the subsequent legislative process, the following key provision was deleted: "there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." John Bingham was an influential supporter of this deletion, on the ground that courts might construe the term "civil rights" more broadly than people like Wilson intended [emphasis added]." —Civil Rights Act of 1866.
"John Bingham and other congressmen argued that Congress did not yet have sufficient constitutional power to enact this law." —Civil Rights Act of 1866.

What's going on imo is that the political party-pirated federal government has too many times (deliberately?) gotten the wires crossed between English common law and constitutional law.

In fact, here's a lament, written in 1803 by respected law professor St. George Tucker, who had observed that English common law precedents were being used as a back door to unconstitutionally expand the federal government's powers.

"If it were, in fact, an unconstitutional exercise of power in congress to pass a law establishing the bank, nothing can manifest the impropriety of over-stepping the limits of the constitution, more than the act which we have just noticed. It shows that the most unauthorised acts of government may be drawn into precedents to justify other unwarrantable usurpations [emphasis added]." —Article 1, Section 8, Clause 6, St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries 1:App. 262--64, 1803.
”The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.

Based on St. George Tucker's lament, consider the politically correct "update" of the Constitution's Article V procedures for amending the Constitution.

"Article V: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, [or justified by previous unconstitutional actions of the federal government that it has gotten away with,] as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

The post-17th Amendment ratification Congress still hasn't learned (blatantly ignores?) from Congress's past, unconstitutional civil rights protections mistakes. This is evidenced, unsurprisingly, by the later vote-buying Civil Rights Act of 1964 that established broad federal race and sex-based civil rights protections going well beyond the scope of 15th and 19th Amendments which limits such protections to voting rights issues.

"15th Amendment:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
"19th Amendment:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

From JJ Sexton via Ace of Spades HQ:

[...]

I had meant to cover a couple other stories that would likely get lost in the sauce between Israel as well as the huge election of Javier Milei in Argentina. And both of them involve wholly or in part the Supreme Court.

First was this completely disgusting non-decision:

The Supreme Court, without comment, rejected to hear former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s appeal for a new trial.
Chauvin claimed the Minnesota state courts did not give him a fair trial, thus denying him the right to a fair trial that the Sixth Amendment protects.
The state charged Chauvin with the death of George Floyd in May 2020. The death led to many destructive and fiery riots across the nation. . .
The trial court and the Minnesota Court of Appeals should have presumed that this potent threat of harm to the jurors and the community prejudiced the jury pool. But in considering the motion to transfer, the district court focused on the publicity surrounding Mr. Floyd’s death and the trial. Repeatedly noting the district court’s “wide discretion” in this regard, the Minnesota Court of Appeals remarkably added that other cases “involved circumstances more extreme than those in [Petitioner’s] trial.” This is not only absurd, but the lower courts wholly failed to consider the palpable threat of harm to the jurors, their families, and their community from a “not guilty” verdict. It is now an unfortunate given that every police-involved critical incident is immediately criticized by significant segments of American society—regardless of the facts. Under these extreme circumstances, the failure to transfer the trial to less dangerous venue denied Petitioner his Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
It does not take a lawyer or law student to know that Chauvin did not receive a fair trial.
Chauvin did not get a fair trial. Professor Jacobson wrote:
I wrote near the end of the trial that there was evidence that Chauvin kept the pressure on Floyd too long, even after he was subdued, handcuffed, and unconscious, and that could provide a basis for conviction. It is possible that someone was guilty of a crime, but also did not receive a constitutionally required fair trial. This is such a case.

There is no excuse other than rank cowardice and or intimidation by outside forces. There are now confirmed forensic and eyewitness accounts that the criminal Floyd died as a result of his resting arrest after overdosing on his drug stash to avoid it's confiscation, on top of the fact that he was already in poor health.

To toss this decision alone and grant a new trial, let alone a new trial showing he was wrongfully convicted would have unleashed hell on America's cities all over again while destroying the cherished leftist narrative of police racism as a means of white supremacy.

And with that preamble, look what else might be coming SCOTUS' way.

Election rigging comes in a whole bunch of flavors. Beyond actual fraud, there’s lawfare.
Vote for politicians who back voter ID and cleaning up voter rolls? Great. They’re elected and they even do it. And then even if the Justice Department doesn’t step in, some leftist group or groups will sue leading to a “settlement” that terminates election reform. Sometimes state and local authorities even secretly collaborate to be sued and then they immediately agree to a “settlement” that ends election reform. Or friendly judges give them exactly what they want.
Take this insane case out of Georgia.
A federal judge in Georgia on Monday ordered two counties to reverse a decision removing more than 4,000 voters from the rolls ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.
The judge, Leslie Abrams Gardner — the sister of former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a prominent ally of [fake]President-elect Joe Biden who has led voter registration efforts across the state — concluded that the counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address data to invalidate registrations in the two counties.
The suit, brought by Majority Forward, represented by National Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias, followed an effort to challenge the lengthy roster of voters simply because their registrations appeared to match U.S. Postal Service change-of address records.
Abrams Gardner, whose husband was just busted for human trafficking, refused to recuse.
Marc Elias has built an empire out of election litigation, but the Dems are moving beyond him and there’s a massive infrastructure of election lawfare in place, ready and waiting for 2024.
But what if private parties couldn’t just sue? Remember, courts decided that none of the conservative litigants in 2020 had standing. Among all the various reasons is that the Voting Rights Act was really systemic political discrimination posing as civil rights legislation. It allowed Democrats to rig elections and to seize control of state electoral practices. But the VRA was never meant to allow private parties to conduct election lawfare. And a nuclear bomb just went off on election lawfare in the 8th circuit.
U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ruled in February 2022, however, that only the head of the Justice Department, the U.S. attorney general, can bring Section 2 lawsuits and dismissed an Arkansas redistricting case brought by advocacy groups representing black voters in the state. On Monday, that lower court ruling was upheld in a 2-1 vote by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose rulings apply to Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. “For much of the last half-century, courts have assumed that [Section 2] is privately enforceable. A deeper look has revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing,” wrote Circuit Judge David Stras, a Trump appointee, in the majority opinion joined by Judge Raymond Gruender, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
It’s a good decision. The VRA itself is broken and widely abused. It’s systemic political discrimination that private lawfare crowdsourced into nationwide election rigging.
But wait a minute.
This is very obviously going to the Supreme Court. And what happens then? I have limited confidence in Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett who have already racked up a fine collection of betrayals. . . .
. . . How is that going to play out here? Quite possibly not so well. The trouble is that when four conservative justices are each a potential swing vote, and they can’t always be predicted, anything can happen. The 8th circuit decision could fundamentally change election or law… or be shut down by Roberts and whoever he can get on his team.

And there's the massive proof in the release of the full J-6 surveillance tapes thanks to our newly installed House Majority Leader that shows what we all had either known or suspected from the get-go: that J-6 was a Democrat/DOJ/FBI op. Innocent people are still rotting in the Garland Archipelago over it.

All of these Democrat Lefty narratives if they tumble will fall right on top of the Left and the globalists. Sic transit gloria Roberts.

Feh.

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