The MeidasTouch Podcast - Supreme Court ISSUES MAJOR RULING before Holiday…

Episode Date: May 26, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the latest Supreme Court decision that will have a major impact on elections. Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viiameidas and use code MEIDAS Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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keep the gerrymandered districts that it put in place following the 2020 census. What the South Carolina Republican-led legislature did is they moved 30,000 black voters who used to be able to vote in the first congressional district held by MAGA Republican Nancy Mace. They can no longer vote in the first congressional district. They've now been moved to vote in other congressional districts in order to try to allow MAGA Republican Nancy Mace or a future MAGA Republican to keep that congressional district under MAGA Republican control. Now, the South Carolina Senate legislature tried to justify this process as saying, this was not a racist gerrymander. This was a political gerrymander, and we are allowed constitutionally to gerrymander congressional districts as part of redistricting based on political grounds.

And so we politically redistricted these congressional districts. We were not looking at race. Why? Just believe us. We just said this is how we're doing it. Ultimately, it seems that they were claiming that the politics was just a subterfuge of the racist gerrymandering. In fact, a three-judge federal panel after a trial was held, after evidence was presented, right, after the full proceedings took place, three judges in South Carolina unanimously found that what the South Carolina legislature did was racist, that it was discriminatory, that it was a violation of the United States Constitution, and South Carolina was ordered to redraw the maps. South Carolina took it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and Justice Alito, who flies the inverted American flag at his D.C. residence and his appeal to heaven flag at his, I don't know,

his beach house where he's apparently living this lavish lifestyle with a mansion on the beach with his appeal to heaven insurrection flag, wrote for the majority and said that the three-judge unanimous panel that heard the trial was wrong, that this was merely a political gerrymander, and that the three-judge panel should have just listened to what the state legislature said and we should have just accepted their word for it. I'll read from you from the opinion. By the way, it gets even worse than that because in a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas criticizes Brown v. Board of Education, which declared in a 9-0 decision that the separate but equal policy was unconstitutional.

Brown v. Board of Education, which ushered in the civil rights movement, led to the integration of schools and the elimination of separation but equal. Justice Clarence Thomas, an African-American judge, ruled that he said that the Supreme Court in that 9-0 decision invented remedies that they shouldn't have and that the Supreme Court should just be much more deferential to what the state legislatures are saying. I'll go through all of that and also share with you some of the dissent by the three justices who were appointed by Democratic administrations. But this is the Supreme Court right now. Here's what Justice Alito said, why the three-judge panel, just so you know what I'm talking about, when these

election cases are filed for discriminatory gerrymandering, they go in front of three judge federal panels. So three judges make that initial ruling, and those judges found that this was clearly discriminatory. Here's what Justice Alito said, though, about why those three judges who heard the full trial got it wrong, but why Alito inverted flagman and appeal to heaven flagman has it right. He goes, the district court disregarded the presumption of legislative good faith by drawing an inference that the state acted in bad faith based on the racial consequences of a political gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan preference are very closely related. Second, the district court inferred a

racial motive from the fact that the enacted plan moved more voters out of District 1 than were needed to comply with the one-person, one-vote rule and that the enacted plan split a few counties. But the high priority that the legislature gave to its partisan aim can explain these decisions. Third, the district court clearly erred, made an error, when it concluded that the legislature's real aim was racial based on the movement of certain predominantly black Charleston priestings from District 1 to District 6. Again, the legislature's partisan goal can easily explain the decision. Fourth, the district court placed excessive weight on the fact that the several legislative staffers admitted to viewing racial

data at some point during the redistricting process. The district court cited no evidence that could not also support the inference that politics drove the mapmaking process and provided no explanation why a mapmaker who wanted to produce a version of District 1 that would be safely Republican would use data about voters' race rather than their political preferences. Summer is setting in. The days are getting longer, but don't let the added sun get in the way of your sleep cycle. Restore your zen with our partner, Vaya Hemp. Trusted by over 250,000 customers, Vaya's hemp products are the Swiss army knife of wellness. From setting the mood in the bedroom to chilling out after a long day,

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want to get better sleep, ease anxiety, enhance your mood, or just feel good, they have something for you. So if you're 21 or over, check out the link to Viya in our description and use the code Midas to receive 15% off. And after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Enhance your everyday with Viya Hemp. justices, and that's why it was a six to three decision, saying, sure, the district court may have got this evidence that the redistricting staffers were focused on race. Sure, the district court got all of this evidence that ultimately in the redistricting process, 30,000 black voters from Charleston were moved to these other districts after all of this racial

data was analyzed by the mapmakers. But you didn't explain why it's not possible that this could just be explained by partisan aims, which are appropriate. Why didn't you just believe the explanations that were given to you by the MAGA Republicans in the South Carolina state legislature? You should have just listened to their, you inferred bad faith district court, so we're going to have to overturn it. Just think about what Justice Alito is saying there. You inferred bad faith. You should have believed what they were saying, that it was just partisan, even though you saw all this evidence of them analyzing racial data, actually moving black voters out of the district after viewing this, recognizing that they're planned because Nancy Mace only won by less than like 1% of the vote by 5,400 votes in 2020. And this was designed to keep her. And there was

correspondence that reflected that. You should have just listened to what the state legislature, what the Republicans were saying. They said that they were doing this for partisan reasons, which is okay under the state gerrymandering laws. So in other words, we're reversing what all of the evidence that you found in trial, you should have just believed what you're saying. Now, the even broader dangerous precedent that this sets, of course, is that all future state legislatures are going to read this opinion and basically say, oh, all we have to do right now in order to win when this case gets to the Supreme Court is just say over and over say, oh, all we have to do right now in order to win when this case gets to the Supreme Court is just say over and over again, it's political purposes. It's partisan. Yeah,

we're shifting voters, but it's for political reasons, not for racial reasons. And the fact that racial reasons and politics sometimes lines up, what a coincidence. We're just focused on the political issues, which we are allowed to do under existing law. That's what that says. Just take a look, though, at what Clarence Thomas said, though, in his concurring opinion right here. Clarence Thomas said that the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, he says, this is what he goes, he goes, took a boundless view of equitable remedies. Those remedies came through an extravagant use of judicial power to end racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Just think about that.

You have Justice Clarence Thomas criticizing the Supreme Court's decision, 9-0 decision in Brown v. Board of Education for using extravagant judicial powers to end racial segregation in the 1950s and the 1960s. And he's putting that in a concurring opinion. And then by the way, you know, in the, you know, in the dissents, you've got strongly worded dissents. And this is what, by the way, Janai Nelson from the Legal Defense Fund says, the highest court in our land greenlit racial discrimination in South Carolina's redistricting process, denied black voters the right to be free from race-based sorting, and sent a message that facts, process, and precedent will not protect the

black vote. Today, the voices of black South Carolinians were muted, and if we are not careful, the next set of votes denied could be those in your state. Make no mistake, our LDF will not yield in the fight to build black political power that represents the people who contribute mightily to it. Let me get you some of the words, some of the decision from the dissent right here. Justice Alina Kagan writing for the three liberals, they say, but the people following the law, said that her conservative colleagues ignored the work of the lower court that found that the redistricting had been gerrymandered by race. Perhaps most dispiriting, Justice Kagan wrote, is that the court adopted special rules to specially disadvantage suits to

remedy race-based discrimination and race-based redistricting. So a horrible ruling. It will potentially allow Nancy Mace to stay in power. It's why also though she's gone more MAGA because they've redistricted out from the district any type of diversity in the district intentionally, and they claim it's political. So that's your right-wing Supreme Court election. I mean, just think about that opinion right there. You should have just listened to the good faith of what the legislature was saying. Forget the evidence. Focus on the good faith. That's major gaslighting by the Supreme Court. Hit subscribe.

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