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« It's not about Snowden | Main | Life's such a treat and it's time you taste it »

One step forward, one step back

So two critically important Supreme Court decisions on human rights in the past few days: the striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act and (effectively) the striking down of the Voting Rights Act. Both decisions were 5-4 splits.

I don't pretend to be an expert, or even literate, in legalise, but as we saw before, the constitutional amendment seems quite clear ("Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation") and a 5-4 split indicates neither of these decisions were based on obvious technical readings of the law.

In immediate response to the VRA ruling, several former slave states renewed their efforts to prevent minorities from voting. In addition to those Voter ID issues, Texas is also moving forward on a new round of gerrymandering in response to this.

In theory Congress can fix this by passing a new law, but that won't happen because Congress is broken. It's broken thanks to a political party that stands to benefit from the new status quo.

Activism might help, but right now it seems like a lot of sites are celebrating the repeal of DOMA and not focusing on the repeal of the VRA. For example, here's what happens on Google right now when you search for the DOMA ruling:

The first time it happened, i wasn't sure what was going on.

Nothing similar for the VRA:

To be fair, what did i expect?  Klansmen?

Additionally, look at the pushback Kevin Drum got on making the same point i'm trying to make here. I'm not saying don't celebrate. The strikedown of DOMA is fantastic. But it shouldn't be at the expense of someone else's rights.

By fnord12 | June 27, 2013, 9:44 AM | Liberal Outrage