Clarence Thomas Wrote A Scathing, Nearly 50-page Dissent About Why The Supreme Court Should Have Gutted Voting Rights

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dis­sent­ed in Thursday’s 5 – 4 rul­ing on Allen v. Milligan.
• He wrote a near­ly-50-page dis­sent about his dis­agree­ment with the ruling.
• Thursday’s rul­ing found that Alabama vio­lat­ed the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial gerrymandering.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing, 48-page dis­sent in the court’s rul­ing that Alabama vio­lat­ed a ban on racial ger­ry­man­der­ing. The Supreme Court ruled 5 – 4 on Thursday, hold­ing a low­er fed­er­al court’s deci­sion that Alabama vio­lat­ed the Voting Rights Act with con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts that dis­crim­i­nate against Black vot­ers in the state by large­ly clump­ing them togeth­er into one dis­trict. The sur­prise rul­ing pre­vent­ed the court from gut­ting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both con­ser­v­a­tives, joined the Supreme Court’s lib­er­al-lean­ing jus­tices in the ruling.
Thomas was one of four con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices who opposed Thursday’s rul­ing. In his dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Thomas wrote that the court’s deci­sion has turned Section 2 — the part of the Voting Rights Act that bans ger­ry­man­der­ing based on race — into “noth­ing more than a racial enti­tle­ment to rough­ly pro­por­tion­al con­trol of elec­tive offices — lim­it­ed only by fea­si­bil­i­ty — wher­ev­er dif­fer­ent racial groups con­sis­tent­ly pre­fer dif­fer­ent candidates.” 

Thomas said the Voting Rights Act does­n’t require Alabama “inten­tion­al­ly redraw its long­stand­ing con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts so that black vot­ers can con­trol a num­ber of seats rough­ly pro­por­tion­al to the black share of the State’s pop­u­la­tion.” “If it did, the Constitution would not per­mit it,” he wrote. More dra­mat­i­cal­ly, Thomas said he would have ruled that the Voting Rights Act had no pow­er at all to pre­vent state leg­is­la­tors from racial­ly ger­ry­man­der­ing dis­tricts — group­ing minor­i­ty votes along racial lines to dilute their power. 
Thomas said he’s “long been con­vinced” that the Voting Rights Act only reg­u­lates vot­ers’ abil­i­ty actu­al­ly to get to the bal­lot or cast it. The ger­ry­man­dered maps were used in the 2022 elec­tion. Republicans won all six non-Black-major­i­ty con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts. The sole Black-major­i­ty dis­trict went to Democrats. Alabama will now need to redraw its elec­toral maps.