LOL!
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In Brown v. US, the final case of the day: The question in that case was whether for purpose of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which extends the minimum sentence for someone who has been convicted of a felony and possesses a gun when that person has been convicted of at least three “serious drug offenses,” the definition of “serious drug offense” should incorporate the federal drug schedules that were in effect at the time of the state drug offense at issue (as the federal government argues) or instead the federal drug schedules that were in effect either when the individual committed the federal firearm offense or at the time of sentencing for that offense (as the defendants in these cases argue).
The court today held that trial courts should look at federal drugs schedules that were in effect at the time of the state conviction.
Justice Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Kagan and in part by Justice Gorsuch.
In the NAACP SC case, Amy Howe at Scotusblog writes:
Both sides in the dispute had asked the Supreme Court to rule by Jan. 1, 2024; when the justices had not done so by mid-March, the Republican legislators returned to the court, seeking to have the 2024 congressional elections go forward using the map that the lower court had deemed unconstitutional. But before the Supreme Court could rule on the legislators’ request, the lower court issued an order leaving the 2021 map in place for the 2024 elections.
The court writes that there is “no direct evidence” that the legislature relied on race when it drew District 1, and that the circumstantial evidence to support such a conclusion “falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process.”
Alito adds that “what the court did—inferring bad faith based on the racial effects of a political gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan preference are very closely correlated—would, if accepted, provide a convenient way for future litigants and lower courts to sidestep our holding in Rucho that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court.”
Justice Thomas writes a separate opinion concurring in part to express his view that there should be no role for courts in deciding racial gerrymandering and vote dilution claims.
The Constitution, Thomas writes, “contemplates no role for the federal courts in the redistricting process.”
Kagan’s dissent is long — 34 pages. She accuses the majority of “stack[ing] the deck against the Challengers. They must lose, the majority says, because the State had a ‘possible’ story to tell about not considering race—even if the opposite story was the more credible.”