NEWS TAKING LIBERTIES
GERRYMANDERING WAS BEGINNING OF THE END FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS BY JOEL MCNALLY
W
ho could have predicted that in 2022 the U.S Supreme Court would begin destroying nearly 50 years of legal protections for a woman’s constitutional right to end an unwanted pregnancy by considering allowing individual states to decide for themselves whether to honor constitutional rights? Wasn’t that issue settled more than 150 years ago in a bloody Civil War? Actually, Wisconsin and many other states could have predicted that those questions might be reopened when the Supreme Court refused in 2019 to do anything to protect voting rights in states like Wisconsin after their legislatures corruptly distorted democracy through blatantly dishonest political gerrymandering.
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The 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, agreed “such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles’” but then irrationally added that “does not mean the solution lies with the federal judiciary.”
DISHONEST GOP MAJORITIES Roberts ordered federal courts to stop interfering with states like Wisconsin when Republicans gerrymandered dishonest Republican majorities in their legislatures that didn’t represent the intentions of voters statewide by rendering hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes meaningless in elections.
Illustrations by Michael Burmesch.
