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‘Terrible, Wrong and Brutal for Minorities’: Appeals Court Guts Voting Rights Act
Legal experts are sounding the alarm over Monday’s Appeals Court ruling they warn “decimates” the Voting Rights Act and will be “brutal” for minority voters.
In a 2-to-1 ruling, the highly-conservative Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled private plaintiffs, for example, voters and civil rights groups, do not have the right to sue to have section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) enforced. Only the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the court ruled, can sue under section 2.
“It will be a devastating near-death blow to the Voting Rights Act if it remains the law,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The New York Times. “Radical theories that would previously have been laughed out of court have been taken increasingly seriously by an increasingly radical judiciary.”
The ruling appears to only apply to the Eight Circuit’s jurisdiction, which is Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, NBC News reports.
“It’s hard to overstate how important and detrimental this decision would be if allowed to stand,” warned UCLA professor of law Rick Hasen, the pre-eminent voice on election law and campaign finance. He added, “the vast majority of claims to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are brought by private plaintiffs, not the Department of Justice with limited resources. If minority voters are going to continue to elect representatives of their choice, they are going to need private attorneys to bring those suits.”
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In his headline Hasen wrote the ruling “Would Decimate the Rights of Minority Voters; Supreme Court Review Almost Certain.”
Professor of law Steve Vladeck, a CNN contributor, noted that not only has the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed section 2 case from private plaintiffs before, it has specified the Voting Rights Act is still operable because private plaintiffs have the ability to sue under section 2. Until now.
#SCOTUS in Shelby County: We don’t need preclearance to enforce the Voting Rights Act because private suits remain available to challenge specific violations of the Act directly under section 2.
Eighth Circuit: About those private suits… https://t.co/if8tw3ZZki
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 20, 2023
“The 8th Circuit has gutted the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act,” declared MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a professor of law and former U.S. Attorney.
NPR called suing under section 2, “a key path for enforcing the Voting Rights Act.” Similarly to Hasen, they wrote the ruling “may set up the next U.S. Supreme Court fight that could further limit the reach of the Voting Rights Act’s protections for people of color.”
“Private individuals and groups, who did not represent the U.S. government, have for decades brought the majority of Section 2 cases to court,” NPR added. “Those cases have challenged the redrawing of voting maps and other steps in the elections process with claims that the voting power of people of color has been minimized.”
Indeed, Marc Elias, the top Democratic attorney who won all but one of more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election, explained: “In past 40 years, there have been at least 182 successful Section 2 cases–only 15 were brought solely by DOJ.”
Professor of law Eric Segall, author of “Originalism as Faith,” and “Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court Is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges,” issued a dire warning.
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“Terrible, wrong and brutal for minorities,” Segall called it, noting that in that ruling the Eight Circuit was “trying to finish what Justice Roberts and Judge Bill Pryor wanted for decades: the eventual judicial repeal of the entire VRA.”
Monday’s ruling was written by a Trump-appointed judge, and upholds a lower court ruling also written by a Trump-appointed judge.
“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal. “This is THE WAY the Voting Rights Act works. It’s THE WAY we enforce the 15th freaking amendment. I think [Chief Justice John] Roberts and [Justice Amy Coney] Barrett will join the liberals to reverse this when it gets to SCOTUS, but my God, letting Trump judges on the federal bench was a terrible plan.”
Image by GPA Photo Archive/US Dept. of State via Flickr and a CC license
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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