Scotus in Complete Shambles After Major Ruling

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1:35Michael Popok:Not so civil war has broken out on the United States Supreme Court between Justice Sam Alito on the far, far right and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. It has to do with congressional maps and remapping the Voting Rights Act and the protection of minority rights. and it broke out into the open over which on the top line looks like a fight about procedure. But when you get down to it, it's a struggle existentially for our democracy. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. Let's talk about the new one or two paragraph decision by Justice Alito that came out about the Voting Rights Act and about when the actual decision that was rendered by the Supreme Court on the 29th of April will be sent down to be enforced.

2:27Michael Popok:Will it be now or will it be in 32 more days as permitted in under the regular rules of the Supreme Court? Of course, MAGA got together and said, no, let's send it down now so that all the remapping can happen in Louisiana. sticking their big fat thumbs on the scale of justice and their big noses into ongoing litigation in Louisiana going on right now about whether the Louisiana can remap and the taking away of the vote for people who've already voted in Louisiana on the old map. And then you have, frankly, a nasty attack on Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was in the dissent by Sam Alito, joined by a couple of other on the bench, including Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

3:20Michael Popok:All right, let's get to it. And there's also new reporting, including through Democracy Docket, about Burt Calais. We call the case Calais versus Louisiana. And Burt Calais was on the winning side at getting John Roberts and the other five MAGA members of the Supreme Court to tear away the last vestige of protection under the Voting Rights Act for people of color, particularly under the 15th Amendment. But who is Burt Kelly? Turns out he's an election denier. He is an election conspiracy theorist. He was listed as a non-African-American voter, but a democracy docket did a good job in the last day outlining all the social media posts that show that he is an election denier to the first degree.

4:09And that was the plaintiff in the case, putting it on pretty shaky grounds to begin with.

4:14Michael Popok:Here's the new ruling by Alito. Then I'm going to play you a video of Ketanji Brown Jackson anticipating, I think, this very, very moment. This is Alito. He's actually joined by Justice Thomas and Gorsuch in the concurrence. It has to do with whether, as requested by Louisiana, whether they were going to shorten the 32-day waiting period that's in the Supreme Court rules for entry of the court's judgment. and speed it up so that Louisiana gets an advantage in some lawsuits that are going on brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the remapping because it'll lead to the throwing away of votes already cast.

4:57Michael Popok:And the Supreme Court gets in the middle of it rather than, as Ketanji Brown-Jackson says in her dissent, rather than apply what's called the Purcell Doctrine, a made-up doctrine by the Supreme Court that says, well, we're getting too close to the election and chastising a lower court federal judge for getting embroiled in a primary in New York and remapping. That was five months ago. Suddenly the Purcell doctrine on the eve of an election disappears. Here's what Alito says. The dissent, and every time I say the that means Ketanji Brown Jackson, the dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered.

5:39Michael Popok:The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional. Stop right there. As Ketanji Brown-Jackson points out, in the last 25 years, the Supreme Court has only bent the rules and immediately had its judgment entered twice. This is highly unusual, especially when there is ongoing litigation in the lower court in the exact matter that was at issue at the Supreme Court. And they also say that, he says, two of the reasons provided by Ketanji Brown-Jackson he will address. One, he says, is trivial, and the other is baseless and insulting.

6:25Michael Popok:Here we go. Here's the fireworks. works. The second reason offered by the dissent is that we should allow the 32-day period to run out in order to avoid the appearance of partiality. But the dissent does not explain why its insistence on unthinking compliance with the rules does not create the appearance of partiality by running out the clock on behalf of those who may find it politically advantageous to have the election occur under the unconstitutional map. I think he misses the point. The point is that there's litigation that the Supreme Court is now taking sides on that is currently going on about voting.

7:04Michael Popok:The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power. That is groundless and utterly irresponsible charge, says Alito. The dissent accuses the court of unshackling itself from constraints. It is the dissent's rhetoric that lacks restraint. This is pretty ballsy stuff, to be honest with you. You don't see this, this lack of decorum among Supreme Court justices where he's taken a swing at Ketanji Brown-Jackson. I'm excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose and their brand new product, the Pocket Hose Ballistic. I used to have to buy a new hose like every year due to kinks and tangles, but the Pocket Hose Ballistic is the upgrade I've been looking for my entire life.

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8:30Michael Popok:Just text ILLEGAL to 64000. That's ILLEGAL to 64000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text LEGAL to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. Here's what she had to say in her dissent that got the feathers all ruffled and nose been out of shape. of Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas. Now, talks about how we got here with the case. Talks about the 32-day rule. And it says on page two of her dissent, a candidate and a Louisiana voters who have already submitted their ballots filed suits against the governor and the secretary of state of Louisiana, asserting that whatever might happen in the future, this election is already underway and must continue under the current maps.

9:15Michael Popok:Meanwhile, to facilitate Louisiana's midstream redistricting rush, appellees now ask us to expedite the release of the certified judgment in Calais. These post-Calais developments have a strong political undercurrent. Normally, the Supreme Court stays out of politics, in fact, finding that it's not just justiciable. And as always, the court has a choice. By my count, we have granted, Ketanji Brown-Jackson says, and an application to issue the judgment forthwith immediately over a party's objection only twice in the last 25 years. Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps, the court, to influence its implementation.

9:57Michael Popok:And make no mistake, that course of action does not follow from the decision itself. The question whether our decision should affect the map to be used in the ongoing primaries raises a host of legal and political issues. There is also a so-called Purcelled principle, which we invoked only five months ago, she writes on page four, to chide a federal district court for improperly inserting itself into an active primary campaign. And here's the dig that Alito didn't like. The court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power because this abandon is unwarranted and unwise.

10:42Michael Popok:Respectfully, I dissent. And then she takes him on in the footnote, footnote three, because the way the drafting of these decisions work, everybody gets to see everything before it goes out the door. So she gets the final word in footnote three of her dissent. contrary to Justice Alito's charges. My conclusion here does not require that the elections to be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional. But he is correct to observe that I am neither claiming that it is now too late for the state legislature or the district court to adopt a new map. Indeed, my preference is for the court to stay out of all this.

11:19Michael Popok:And the best way to do that is to stick with the default procedures. It is the majority that opts to do otherwise, thereby seemingly endorsing Louisiana efforts to change the map before the pending lawsuits have a chance to play out. That is her point, a point that was purposely missed by Alito in his dissent, attacking Ketanji Brown-Jackson. Here's Ketanji Brown-Jackson just recently talking about her problems with her brethren on the court. Play the clip. ...in terms of its relationships with the lower courts and the American people. They are substantial. To start, having a docket that allows the court to routinely interfere with lower court cases while they are in progress disrespects the lower court's authority and withholds the deference appellate courts have traditionally provided regarding fact-bound matters that are within a trial court's expertise.

12:18In addition, the court is withholding its own work product by issuing summary orders further undermining the public's confidence in our judicial colleagues. A one-line stay grant that overturns a lower court's contrary conclusion suggests that the judgment call was so easy that no deliberation or explanation is required. And that suggestion casts aspersions on the tedious work that our colleagues have done to carefully parse the evidence, weigh the various factors, and exercise their considerable equitable discretion. Summary orders on the emergency docket are also costly in terms of the court's own relationship with the public.

13:07The Supreme Court's power comes from its reasoning, so it really does need to inform the public as to why it has decided to chart a particular course. issuing important decisions in such a cursory manner disrespects not only the people whose lives are upended by its rulings but also the public that has given it trust and authority. And then there is the fact that significant real world harms can follow Supreme Court rulings and when our orders don't acknowledge that reality, they seem oblivious and thus ring hollow. Similarly, given the real-world facts that a stay requests ask the court to consider, the court's stay decisions can, at times, come across utterly irrational.

14:05We cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we consistently green light harmful acts that do real damage to litigating plaintiffs without a court decision fully and fairly determining the lawfulness of that challenged conduct on the merits. A litigant can do all that our...

14:31Michael Popok:All right. This shows that just barely beneath the surface, we have seething ideological and jurisprudential differences, that's a nice way of putting it, on the court. I think that one day if a Democrat gets control of the presidency, I think somebody like Etonji Brown-Jackson will be chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, a position Alito, who is close to retirement or resigning, will never attain. And that's part of the backdrop here of what we're watching. Jealousy, once again, rearing its ugly head. And it has not been lost on me of the stark contrast here between a bunch of old white guys joined by Clarence Thomas for cover in Alito and Gorsuch attacking the only black woman on the United States Supreme Court in Ketanji Brown Jackson.

15:30Michael Popok:about an issue about fundamentally whether there's going to be black and minority representation, primarily in the South or not, for the next generation. I'm Michael Popak. Take a minute, come over to Legal AF and hit the free subscribe button as we continue to grow our pro-democracy channel. Until my next report, this is Michael. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, add free episodes of our podcast and more exclusive content. Only available at MidasPlus.com.

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