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Hello! Wednesday’s bombshell voting rights decision from the Supreme Court is a testament to Chief Justice John Roberts’s patience and penchant for the long game.
As far back as 1982, when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he worked to oppose the expansion of a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had initially covered only intentional discrimination, to address practices that had discriminatory results. Back then, his efforts failed.
On the court, Chief Justice Roberts first flirted with cutting back the law in 2009, four years into his tenure and the year after I started covering the court.
In his majority opinion in that case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, the chief justice took an off ramp — after planting a time bomb. “We are now a very different nation” from the one that first passed the Voting Rights Act, he wrote. “Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”
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