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The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus compared the “Supreme Court majority” to “ghosts of the confederacy” after the court ordered a stay on Alabama’s new congressional maps amid a legal review.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the fifth-highest ranking Democrat in the House and an unabashed progressive, made the inflammatory attack on Twitter early Tuesday morning.
Jeffries attacked the “legitimacy” of the Supreme Court’s majority in his tweet, as well.
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House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., meets with reporters following a conference call with fellow Democrats at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“The Supreme Court majority has zero legitimacy,” Jeffries wrote just after midnight Tuesday morning. “Ghosts of the confederacy are alive and well.”
The attack was in response to the Supreme Court voting 5-4 in favor of a stay on Alabama’s new congressional map, overruling a lower court’s decision ordering the state to redraw it.
Alabama’s new map contains seven congressional districts, with only one of the seven having a majority Black population.
The lower court ruled that the new congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, with plaintiffs arguing that the map is the latest instance in Alabama going around federal law to “discriminate against Black voters to maintain power.”
Members of the Supreme Court pose on April 23, 2021. They are, seated from left Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, and, standing from left, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote in the opinion the stay would allow the court ample time to review the case.
“The stay will allow this Court to decide the merits in an orderly fashion – after full briefing, oral argument, and our usual extensive internal deliberations – and ensure that we do not have to decide the merits on the emergency docket,” they wrote.
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Meanwhile, Justice Elena Kagan dissented with the two other liberal justices joining her, writing it “does a disservice to the District Court, which meticulously applied this Court’s longstanding voting-rights precedent.”
“And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished – in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy,” Kagan continued.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal justices on the court in voting against the ruling.