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Discrimination Supreme Court Voting Rights

Ketanji Brown Jackson Gives Her SCOTUS Brethren A History Lesson During Tuesday Oral Arguments

During oral arguments Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave her right-wing brethren a much-needed history lesson on voting rights.

The case before the high court is Merrill v. Merrigan, which challenges Section 2 of Voting Rights Act. A lower court ruling struck down an Alabama legislative map which is considered to be discriminatory to people of color who live in the state.

Justice Jackson weighed in, making it clear that she isn’t going to sit quietly and let conservatives strike down more of the Voting Rights Act.

“I don’t think that we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem, because I understood that we looked at the history and traditions of the Constitution and what the framers and the founders thought about, and when I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, in a race-conscious way. That they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen, during the Reconstruction period, were actually brought equal to everyone else in society.”

Indeed, those two amendments, which were ratified after the Civil War, were meant to protect the rights of black citizens who had once been enslaved in Confederate states, Jackson continued, and she supported her assertion with statements made by the very legislators who crafted them.

“I looked in the report that was submitted by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the 14th Amendment, and that report says that the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves. The legislator who introduced that amendment said that, quote, ‘Unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen.'”

But Justice Jackson was far from finished reminding her colleagues of why such laws are necessary today just as they were during Reconstruction.

“They drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which specifically stated that citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens. That’s the point of that act, to make sure that the other citizens, the Black citizens, would have the same as the white citizens.

“They recognized that there was unequal treatment. People based on their race were being treated unequally and, importantly, when there was a concern that the Civil Rights Act wouldn’t have a constitutional foundation, that’s when the 14th Amendment came into play. It was drafted to give a constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens.”

Jackson concluded her comments by eviscerating the argument being made attorneys for the state of Alabama:

“So with that as the framing and the background, I’m trying to understand your position that Section 2, by its plain text is doing that same thing, is saying that you need to identify people in this community who have less opportunity and less ability to participate and ensure that that’s remedied, right? It’s a race-conscious effort, as you have indicated. I’m trying to understand why that violates the 14th Amendment, given the history and background of the 14th Amendment.”

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Discrimination GOP LGBT Issues WTF?!

Florida GOP State Senator Declares That Being LGBT ‘Is Not A Permanent Thing’

During a Tuesday debate on the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that has already passed the Florida House of Representatives and is now before the Senate, Republican State Sen. Ileana Garcia rose to speak in favor of the bill, but what she said proved that her opinion of the issue is far from fully informed.

Speaking for over 15 minutes, Garcia expressed her support for the legislation, which would ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with younger students:

“Gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing. This isn’t about targeting. This is perhaps about rerouting the responsibilities back to the parents.”

Garcia also claimed that she has family and friends who are LGBT, “but I don’t pander on that.”

And then there was what the senator had to say about a transgender woman she claims who know who prefers to date women:

“A friend of mine went through the whole transition as an older man, 58-years-old, became a woman and guess what? He still likes women! He went through the whole process and we’d laugh together and I’d say, why do you want to deal with the hormones? Why do you want to worry about the extensions and the hair and boobs and the nails and he loved it.

“So he had a sexual experience. And he realized that he continued to like women.”

And while she was at it, Garcia also decided to share some completely bogus “statistics” about gender-affirming surgery:

“You know, a lot of people don’t know that I think that the statistics are that 4 out of 7 people who do the full transition end up committing suicide because it’s tough.”

Nope. Not even remotely accurate. As a matter of fact, gender-affirming surgery is actually shown to reduce the likelihood of a person committing suicide.

The bill was passed by the Florida Senate and now heads to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) who will sign it because he wants to try and create a cultural issue he can use to get a second term in office and use his reelection as a springboard to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.