Supreme Court arguments on Obama health care law set stage for legal assault on social programs


The Supremes: far from being above politics. And they can do damage till they drop.

By Tom Carter , WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization
Thank you, WSWS.ORG.

Beginning Monday of last week, the US Supreme Court held three consecutive days of oral arguments on a number of issues related to the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s 2010 health care legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), including the “individual mandate” provision requiring citizens to purchase heath insurance from private corporations.

To the apparent surprise of many legal commentators and the nominally liberal justices on the court, the right-wing faction used the opportunity to launch a political offensive not just against the Obama health care legislation, but also against federal social programs in general.

The four-justice right-wing bloc on the Supreme Court, consisting of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, represents the most reactionary sections of the ruling elite. Wednesday’s arguments, in particular, revealed that this bloc is seeking to exploit the regressive and unpopular Obama health care “reform” to lay a pseudo-legal basis for far-reaching attacks on all federal entitlement programs, beginning with Medicaid.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been the subject of intense litigation involving more than two dozen federal lawsuits since it was passed in March 2010. The principal challengers have been 26 of 50 state governments and the National Federation of Independent Business, as well as numerous private individuals. Over the past two years, judges in the lower federal courts around the country have issued conflicting and contradictory decisions, which the Supreme Court is tasked with resolving in the present case, Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services.

It now seems clear that Chief Justice John Roberts made the decision to schedule three days of arguments, an extraordinary step, precisely to create an opportunity to lay out the case for going back to the days before the Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal when the Court routinely blocked social legislation. In this case as in all others, the right-wing bloc on the court proceeds from a political goal, not legal precedent or principle, and improvises its legalistic arguments to achieve that goal. In the three days of arguments last week, the justices, particularly Scalia, barely sought to conceal their political motives.

The court focused the first day of arguments on preliminary considerations of whether the court could even consider challenges raised to portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that had not yet gone into effect. The second day was dedicated to the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which the right wing attacked as an unconstitutional imposition of the federal government on individual Americans.

It was not until the third day that the political dynamic emerged in full force. On Wednesday, the court invited arguments on two issues: first, whether, if the individual mandate is struck down, the entire law should be thrown out; and second, whether the provisions in the law expanding the scope of Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor, violate states’ rights.

The first day’s arguments were largely technical. They for the most part turned on whether the fine associated with failure to comply with the individual mandate, which is slated to go into effect in 2015, is a “penalty” or a “tax” for the purposes of a statute prohibiting challenges to taxes before they are actually imposed. The Obama administration maintained that the fine was not a tax, in order to insure that the Supreme Court took its decision this year rather than waiting until 2015. Its right-wing opponents adopted the same position on the jurisdictional question, so the Supreme Court appointed an independent counsel, Robert Long, to argue that the penalty was in fact a tax.

The legal arguments over the constitutionality of the individual mandate itself on the second day took a fairly predictable form. In general, the court’s ostensibly liberal justices defended the provision, while the court’s right-wing bloc criticized it (with the exception of Thomas, who, in accord with his bizarre custom, said absolutely nothing throughout the three days of proceedings). The so-called “swing” justice, Anthony Kennedy, asked critical questions of both sides.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party, in the closest collaboration with insurance and health industry lobbyists, constructed their health care “reform” around the individual mandate provision for the purpose of ensuring that corporate and government health care costs could be cut without impinging on the profit interests of the insurance companies.

Obama and the Democrats rejected out of hand any form of universal health care under a government-run program. Instead, they sought, through the individual mandate, to place the onus for their “reform” of the health care system on individual working people, while expanding the market for private insurers and underwriting their profits by guaranteeing tens of millions of new policyholders.

At the same time, the plan entails hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in the federal Medicare program for the elderly and reductions in benefits for millions of working class families. A recent Congressional Budget Office report estimated that up to 20 million workers could lose their employer-sponsored health insurance in the first few years of the program.

The posturing by the Supreme Court’s right-wing bloc as defenders of individual rights against overreaching government was utterly cynical. When it comes to torture, military commissions, indefinite detention, state secrets, domestic spying, warrantless searches, police abuse and attacks on free speech, these figures are more than happy to tear the Constitution to shreds.

On the third day, the court gave Republican attorney Paul D. Clement, representing 26 states, a lengthy opportunity to present arguments that the Obama health care legislation violated states’ rights. Clement’s remarks rapidly assumed the character of an attack not just on the health care overhaul, but also on Medicaid.

Medicaid, launched in 1965, is funded largely by the federal government but is administered by the states. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid and requires the states to make it available to a larger section of the population. This helps to cut costs by pushing millions more working class families into bare-bones health care coverage.

In his arguments before the Court, Clement declared that in 1984 “federal spending to the states was a shade over $21 billion. Right now it’s $250 billion, and that’s before the expansion under this statute.” Clement argued that these sums of money amount to “coercion” and are a violation of states’ rights.

Justice Elena Kagan asked, “Well, if you are right, Mr. Clement, doesn’t that mean that Medicaid is unconstitutional now?” “Not necessarily, Justice Kagan,” Clement replied evasively.

However, Clement went on later to argue openly that the court “should go back and reconsider your cases that say that Congress can spend money on things that it can’t do directly”—in other words, the court should reconsider whether federal programs such as Medicaid are constitutional.

Clement’s argument that the court should “go back” to legal doctrines that prevailed a century ago evidently shocked the liberal justices. Arch-reactionary Justice Antonin Scalia, on the other hand, went out of his way to praise Clement’s arguments.

In an article Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, legal commentator Jess Bravin called the doctrines advanced by Clement and welcomed by the court’s right-wing bloc “a tectonic shift in constitutional doctrine that has dominated since the New Deal.”

In a subsequent article on Thursday, Bravin elaborated on this point, writing: “In the run-up to the court argument, the Medicaid expansion received less attention. But the issue emerged as perhaps the most revelatory of the Roberts court’s view of American federalism, with conservative justices suggesting a deep unease over the dominant role in domestic policy Washington has played since the New Deal.”

The powers of the federal government to enact and maintain social programs such as Medicaid, long thought to be a settled constitutional issue, are now subject to challenge along the lines of legal doctrines that were rejected in the 1930s.

The court’s decision on the health care law, due in June, is not a foregone conclusion. During the arguments, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito expressed concern that striking down the individual mandate could be “unfair” to insurance companies. None of the other justices pointed out that whether or not the insurance companies would be able to continue raking in massive profits had nothing to do with the constitutionality of the law.

Chief Justice Roberts on the third day hinted in the direction of caution in openly attacking Medicaid, suggesting that the states had compromised their case for states’ rights in relation to federal social programs by accepting large amounts of federal funding over the past 75 years.

The ultimate decision will be made far more on the basis of political considerations than on legal or constitutional ones.

Regardless of the Court’s ultimate decision in the case, the arguments presented last week represent the opening shots in a legal challenge to the entire framework of basic entitlement programs. Workplace safety laws, food stamps, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Social Security Act, Medicaid, Medicare, and anti-discrimination statutes—the Supreme Court has placed a question mark over virtually the entire system of social legislation developed in the United States in the 20th century.

 

 

 

 

 

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Political Prisoners in America’s Gulag

Russell Maroon Shoats

A self-designated “New African Political Prisoner of War,” he’s serving life/plus for alleged 1970 involvement in a policeman’s death and wounding of another.

Incarcerated in 1972, he’s spent 40 years in over a dozen federal, state, and local prisons and jails, including over 21 years in solitary confinement locked down 23 or more hours daily. More on that below.

In 1979, he was in maximum security confinement, during which time he was “forcibly drugged and on one occasion hospitalized from a hospital induced overdose….”

In the 1960s, he became politically active. He joined the African liberation movement, and was a Philadelphia-based Black Unity Council founding member. In 1969, it merged with Black Panther Party’s Philadelphia chapter.

Compromised of prisoners’ families, former inmates, and supporters, the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) calls America’s prison system exploitive, punitive and corrupt. It says:

Most people “in prisons are poor, (black or) brown, urban, functionally illiterate, unemployed or under-employed before they were locked down, and are there for (alleged) non-violent crimes. The prison system reflects all inequalities in our society….”

As a result, it wants the current system abolished. It’s racist and unjust. Shoats co-founded HRC.

Together with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), National Lawyers Guild and others, HRC’s campaigning to free Shoats from isolation and return him to the general prison population.

On his behalf, a letter-writing/petition campaign was launched. Support him by signing the petition for humane treatment. Now 68, he’s held at Pennsylvania’s:

State Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
724-852-2902

Prison authorities call him a security threat because of past attempted and successful escapes. In fact, he’s kept isolated based on false allegations about planning a 1980 prison takeover. He’s also persecuted for his activism, leadership, and human rights support.

America’s Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. It’s prison system commits it ruthlessly with impunity. Shoats is one of many victims. Locked up, they’re out of sight and mind.

Everyone deserves justice. America’s most vulnerable get none, especially those in the maw of a racist, brutalizing, dehumanizing prison system.

Comments on Two Other Prisoners

On February 16, the FBI Detroit Division announced “underwear bomber” Uman Farouk Abdulmutallab’s life sentence for conviction on charges of:

conspiracy to commit terrorism;
attempted murder;
willfully placing a destructive device on an aircraft;
attempting to use “a weapon of mass destruction;”
attempting to destroy a civil aircraft; and
three counts of “possession of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence.”

Attorney General Eric Holder called Abdulmutallab “a remorseless terrorist who believes it is his duty to kill Americans.” Holder’s only skills include hyperbole, making false allegations, and sending innocent victims to prison.

Abdulmutallab was set up. On December 25, 2009, he was aboard an Amsterdam – Detroit bound flight. US officials claimed he was trained in Yemen by Al Qaeda, obtained explosive chemicals (PETN), and tried  detonating them on board.

In fact, he was a protected CIA patsy, set up as a provocation to facilitate America’s Yemen’s civil war involvement.

Earlier denied a UK entrance visa, he wasn’t on a no fly list. He paid cash for a one-way Detroit ticket, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped on board by a “well-dressed Indian” to facilitate a false flag scheme, using him as a convenient dupe.

CIA/Mossad/Indian Research Analysis Wing (RAW) planned it. Abdulmutallab’s PETN was weak, technically deficient, didn’t go off properly, and had fire cracker strength at most.

No matter. Railroaded by Justice Department prosecutors, he’ll spend the rest of his life doing hard time in prison.

On February 17, New York Times writer Charlie Savage headlined, “FBI Arrests Man in a Suspected Terrorist Plot Near the US Capitol,” saying:

Amine El Khalifi, a Moroccan national, was arrested “carrying a MAC-10 gun and a vest packed with nails and what he thought (were) explosives in what (federal agents) said was a plan to carry out a suicide bombing at the United States Capitol.”

Based on numerous past false flags, be very suspicious about all Justice Department charges. Against El Khalifi, they look very much like entrapping an innocent/naive dupe into involvement in what he had no prior intent, desire, or willingness to do.

Holder, however, defends entrapment. He calls it an “essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing terror attacks.”

In fact, they’re maliciously manufactured to manipulate fear and justify America’s global war on terrorism. Nearly always, Muslims are charged. It’s part of America’s war on Islam.

Innocent victims are charged, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Justice is malevolently denied. Imperial wars are facilitated. Vital social benefits are lost to fund them.

The Times article said El Khalifi posed no threat. An undercover sting operation gave him “inoperative weapons.” He was set up to entrap another victim. He’s like numerous others foiled in the nick of time. Ask why alleged home-grown terrorists don’t succeed.

Perhaps it’s because they don’t exist except in bogus Justice Department charges and major media scoundrels regurgitating them without challenge.

Assistant attorney general Lisa Monaco lied, saying:

“Today’s case underscores the continuing threat we face from home-grown violent extremists. Thanks to a coordinated law enforcement effort, El Khalifi’s alleged plot was thwarted before anyone was harmed.”

In fact, the only extremist home-grown threats are federal, state and local officials, as well as corporate ones they serve.

As a result, innocent victims wrongfully suffer. Many rot unjustly in federal and state gulags while government and corporate criminals do what they please with impunity. It’s high time public rage challenged them.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

 

 

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Anti-democratic actions by the US Supreme Court

By Tom Carter , WSWS.ORG


Voting rights

In a case decided on January 20, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling requiring a lower court to show more “deference” to a congressional redistricting plan developed by the state of Texas, notwithstanding the fact that the plan is plainly in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The ruling in that case, Perry v. Perez, as well as a ruling putting off a decision in a related West Virginia case, casts a shadow over the continued viability of the Voting Rights Act and the principle of “one-person, one-vote.”

Supreme Court commentator Lyle Denniston observed in an article last Friday on SCOTUSblog.com entitled “New View on One-Person, One-Vote?” that a lower federal court order blocked by the Supreme Court in the West Virginia case had declared that the principle of “one-person, one-vote” required “zero variance” in population between congressional districts as the norm. Accordingly, he wrote, the Supreme Court’s actions have “raised doubts about the authority of federal District Courts to require states to achieve absolute equality of population in drafting new voting boundaries.”

Under the challenged West Virginia plan, certain districts have thousands more members than the others, with the ultimate result that Republican votes count more than Democratic ones.

The Texas redistricting plan is, by all accounts, simply a maneuver to squeeze more Republican congressional seats out of a state already infamous for congressional districts that are gerrymandered into bizarre and irrational shapes. The Supreme Court decision on Friday legitimizes and encourages such brazenly undemocratic schemes.

As numerous commentators have observed, it is surely more than a coincidence that, in an election year, the Supreme Court has taken so many contentious cases and decided them on terms favorable to the extreme right.

Warrantless GPS surveillance

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the contentious case involving the government’s GPS surveillance of an individual in Washington, DC without a warrant.

This case, United States v. Jones, was chiefly significant for the position taken by the Obama administration, which asserted that there was no limit on the government’s ability to secretly track any individual using GPS, without a warrant, and to compile that information for use in criminal prosecutions. (See, “Obama administration defends unlimited warrantless GPS surveillance before Supreme Court”)

During oral argument last autumn, the following exchange took place between Chief Justice Roberts and Obama’s deputy solicitor general, Michael R. Dreeben:

Roberts: Your argument is, it doesn’t depend how much suspicion you have, it doesn’t depend on how urgent it is. Your argument is you can do it, period. You don’t have to give any reason. It doesn’t have to be limited in any way, right?

Dreeben: That is correct, Mr. Chief Justice.

Several of the justices, during oral argument, were clearly rattled by the Obama administration’s provocative assertion that the government could even collect GPS data on the activities and daily whereabouts of the nine Supreme Court justices themselves. References to George Orwell’s novel1984 were made six times during oral argument.

GPS devices, by means of satellite triangulation, are able to precisely indicate the location of targeted individuals to within, in some cases, a few feet. Government agents had surreptitiously installed a GPS device on nightclub owner Antone Jones’ car and then monitored and recorded his movements for four weeks without interruption.

Even the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the most right-wing court in the country, thought the Obama administration had overstepped itself. “A person who knows all of another’s travels,” the DC Circuit wrote, “can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups, and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”

In its decision Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Obama administration’s position, finding that the secret GPS surveillance of Jones without a warrant or judicial oversight of any kind was clearly unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court was split 5-4 as to the rationale. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia stated that the government “intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted” in 1791. Scalia’s opinion was joined by Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

In writing for the minority, Justice Samuel Alito said instead, that “reasonable expectations of privacy were violated by the long-term monitoring of the movements of the vehicle [Jones] drove.” Alito’s opinion was joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Bryer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Fourth Amendment to the US constitution protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and requires that the government obtain a warrant to conduct a search. Historically, the Fourth Amendment has been understood to offer protection from searches and seizures where there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The doctrine of Scalia and company, falsely proclaiming itself to be the “original” understanding of the Bill of Rights, would limit the protections of the Fourth Amendment to those factual circumstances that could have arisen in 1791. Accordingly, in his opinion in United States v. Jones, Scalia analogizes GPS surveillance to a constable hiding in the back of an 18th century stagecoach to record its movements.

Scalia’s “originalism,” as codified in United States v. Jones, places in doubt a long line of precedent grounded in the formulation that the Fourth Amendment applies wherever there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Thus, the Supreme Court’s opinion, beneath the appearance of upholding the Fourth Amendment, paves the way for future attacks.

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We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

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Supreme Court intervention in Arizona anti-immigrant law poses threat to democratic rights

The announcement Monday by the US Supreme Court that it will review a decision striking down provisions of Arizona’s unprecedented anti-immigrant law casts a shadow over what had been considered historically settled questions affecting the democratic rights of the entire population.

Arizona’s reactionary Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona Senate Bill 1070) was passed by the state legislature in April of last year in the midst of a campaign led by the Tea Party to whip up nationalist and xenophobic sentiment. It was struck down in part by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.

There can be no doubt that the Supreme Court’s intervention in the case is politically motivated, spearheaded by the right-wing four-justice block of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. Numerous commentators have remarked that the Court has rarely intervened in as many highly controversial and politically explosive cases in a presidential election year as the Roberts Court in the current term.

In this case, Arizona v. United States, the court intervened on its own initiative, not waiting for a final ruling on SB 1070 in the lower courts. Just three days before, on December 9, the Court issued a stay on the implementation of a Texas congressional redistricting plan that had been ordered by federal courts in place of a plan enacted by the Republican state legislature. The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the federal court-ordered plan, which is considered more favorable to the Democrats than the state proposal.

Last month, the court agreed to hear challenges to the Obama administration’s health care overhaul law.

The court’s intervention in the immigration case was cause for celebration among the right-wing supporters of the Arizona law. The state’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, announced her support for the Supreme Court’s intervention in a statement. “I am confident the high court will uphold Arizona’s constitutional authority and obligation to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens,” she declared.

Arizona SB 1070, couched in militaristic language, purports to make “attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” Thus, the law’s openly declared purpose, in the name of ridding the state of so-called “illegal aliens,” is to harass, intimidate, and tyrannize Arizona’s immigrant population.

The bill’s provisions constitute a threat not just to the democratic rights of immigrants, but to the population as a whole. The bill grants police officers historically unprecedented powers, which the law then requires them to exercise.

Among SB1070’s more draconian provisions is the authority it grants to police to demand identification papers of any person whom the police “suspect” to be an undocumented immigrant. Such a brazenly discriminatory and racist provision has long been a prominent demand of extreme right-wing and white-supremacist groups.

Arizona SB 1070 also requires police officers to investigate the immigration status of anyone they encounter, even if it is for a routine traffic stop.

With deliberately vague and expansive language, SB 1070 also makes it a crime to “conceal, harbor, or shield” an undocumented immigrant. This provision, echoing the language of the US federal government’s vague “material support for terrorism” laws and the USA PATRIOT Act, threatens to criminalize broad sections of the population.

It goes without saying that these police-state measures flout the historic democratic protections in the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1791, declares that the “ right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” and also that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Arizona’s SB 1070 would empower officers, without a warrant and without probable cause, to carry out arbitrary searches and seizures, including by demanding “identification papers” from any person, citizen or otherwise, on a mere “suspicion.”

State legislatures in Alabama, South Carolina, Utah, Georgia and Indiana have recently enacted their own versions of SB 1070 attacking undocumented immigrants.

The Obama administration mounted a legal challenge to SB 1070 in July of last year. Significantly, it did not challenge the law on the grounds that it violated basic democratic and constitutional rights. The administration argued instead that SB 1070 interfered with powers exclusively vested in the president to set nationwide immigration policy. In April of this year, on these very limited grounds, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that a number of the most onerous provisions of SB 1070 would be struck down and invalidated.

Contrary to the position of the Obama administration—which strives at every turn to accumulate unlimited power in the executive branch—the power to regulate all issues affecting immigration and naturalization has historically been vested in the federal Congress, not in the president. The US Constitution gives Congress alone the power to “establish [a] uniform Rule of Naturalization.”

That SB 1070 is invalid under federal law is not particularly controversial from a historical and legal standpoint. Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and the author of an authoritative treatise on US constitutional law, opined that SB 1070 “is clearly preempted by federal law under Supreme Court precedents.”

Obama appointee Elena Kagan, because she worked in the Obama administration’s Department of Justice before joining the Supreme Court, has recused herself from the case. Kagan’s recusal increases in proportion the strength of the right-wing four-justice bloc bent on ripping up the Bill of Rights.

There is a history in the United States to the question of the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. Not more than 150 years ago, the question of whether a confederation of southern states had “rights” as states to enforce black slavery was settled in a conflict in which 3 million men fought and 640,000 died.

In the 20th century, significant democratic measures were largely implemented under the framework of federal legislation. State law and so-called “states’ rights” were used as bulwarks for the defense of anti-democratic laws and policies.

The civil rights legislation of the 1960s, child labor laws, minimum wage laws and countless other reform measures were implemented by the federal legislature over and against opposition from state governments. In light of this history, the assertion by the state legislature of Arizona of the “right” to enact police-state measures targeting immigrants—and the US Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case after the Arizona law had already been struck down—has far-reaching significance.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, in her statement cited above, observed, “This case is not just about Arizona… it’s about the fundamental principle of federalism, under which these states have a right to defend their people.”

In yesterday’s New York Times, journalist and lawyer Adam Liptak pointed out that in a 2009 case involving a conflict over the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its effect on the state of Texas, Chief Justice John Roberts openly criticized the act, suggesting that provisions enabling the federal Justice Department to oversee and even veto changes in election procedures and laws in southern states with a history of racial apartheid were no longer relevant. In that case, however, the court did not actually reach and decide the question of federalism.

Liptak pointed out that the federal judges who overrode the Texas congressional redistricting scheme and ordered the plan that has now been stayed by the Supreme Court based their action on the very provisions of the Voting Rights Act that were questioned by Roberts.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the case, by the very fact that it has decided to hear an appeal of federal court rulings striking down key aspects of the Arizona anti-immigrant law, the Supreme Court has lent credibility to overtly anti-constitutional measures and emboldened the most reactionary political forces in the country. If the Court overrules the Ninth Circuit and allows SB 1070 to stand, this will have vast implications, opening the door for an intensified attack on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and on democratic rights more generally.

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