Trump is elevating judges who could gut the Voting Rights Act by alexnazaryan
WASHINGTON — Fresh from handing President Trump a victory in his impeachment trial, the U.S. Senate has moved to install federal judges who have expressed disdain for the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law that struck down rules across the South that kept African-Americans from the ballot box.
Conservatives argue that it is unfair to characterize judges like Brasher for work they did on behalf of constituents they were required to defend in court. “When lawyers take litigating positions on behalf of their clients, they’re doing their jobs,” says Mike Davis, whose Article 3 Project advocates for a conservative judiciary.
Trump has remade federal courts all across the country, but those changes could be especially consequential in the Deep South, where judges helped keep segregation in place, but then later struck segregation down during the civil rights era.
As far as the president’s critics are concerned, appointing judges who will roll back voting-rights protections also has long-term effects on elections. Even if the new judges don’t help Trump in the near-term, their lifetime tenure on the federal bench could ensure Republican majorities for a generation to come. Bob Moser, author of a book on Southern politics called “Blue Dixie,” notes that voter suppression efforts have been moving forward in Florida, Tennessee and Texas.
In 2014, he argued Alabama’s case against African-American legislators who charged that Republicans created electoral districts that concentrated black voters, depriving Democrats of broad statewide support, a practice known as gerrymandering. In his article, Wilson argued that federal oversight was not necessary, while more stringent voting regulations were. “They might spend less time chasing agendas that aren't there,” he wrote of federal monitors, “and more time investigating the voter fraud and other irregularities.”
But as the vote on Brasher neared, it became clear that Scott was not going to stand in the way. Scott’s spokesman, Sean Smith, noted in response to a Yahoo News query that Scott had voted in favor of Brasher’s confirmation to the district court last year. “I have not heard anything to indicate his position has changed,” Smith said.
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