I propose that idea as one way of understanding what is happening with this horrendous national voter suppression movement.

Charles Hamilton Houston, the architect of the civil rights attack on Jim Crow laws, pushed for legal arguments that would make their way to the Supreme Court, knowing the laws were unconstitutional and our side would win.

For decades, lawyers led by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund crafted cases that the Supreme Court would eventually rule on. Invariably, the Courts ruled in our favor and against the system of Jim Crow/segregation/discrimination. Thurgood Marshall, longtime head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, won 29 times in 32 appearances before the Court.

But the enemies of racial progress took note and set about changing the Supreme Court. Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 launched an era of Republican domination of Supreme Court appointments. Nixon and subsequent GOP presidents made appointments a campaign issue, pledging to nominate conservative, so-called “strict constructionist,” jurists.” Republican presidents appointed 15 of 19 justices since 1969.

Nixon started the reordering of the Supreme Court. Among his appointments was William Rehnquist.

For years, Rehnquist had publicly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When Rehnquist was a law clerk on the Supreme Court, he wrote a memo agreeing with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 that formed the bedrock legal justification for nearly 60 years of segregation.

Rehnquist’s Supreme Court office was a haven for young aspiring conservative lawyers. One of these was his young superstar law clerk, John Roberts.

Later, working in the Justice Department, Roberts pressed his arguments against the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act unless it was changed to remove its results test for discrimination. As he wrote at the time, these “tests would lead to quotas” and “intrusive interference by the federal courts into state and local processes.”

When Roberts got a chance to move against the Voting Rights Act in 2013, did he ever. The critical part of the Voting Rights Act required specified jurisdictions to get Justice Department approval before making changes in their voting procedures. This was the preclearance statute.

Because of their record on denying the right to vote for many African Americans, nine states were subject to preclearance, including Georgia and Texas, two of the states recently enacting draconian changes to their voting procedures—voter suppression on steroids.

John Roberts as Chief Justice led the majority conservative Court to eliminate the preclearance requirement in the Voting Rights Act, thus gutting the Act. Before the Shelby Decision in 2013, Texas would not have been allowed to shut down voting precincts in primarily black and brown neighborhoods. Also, Georgia’s voter suppression law could not have been implemented. 

Chief Justice Roberts’ rationale for eliminating the preclearance statute was “there is no denying … that the conditions that originally justified [preclearance] no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.”

In her dissenting opinion, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg answered Roberts’ ridiculous statement. She wrote, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

And what about Trump? What part did he play?

He did two things. One, he appointed three Supreme Court Justices, all right-wingers. With new voting rights cases coming before the Court, some observers fear that they will permit even more severe voting suppression changes.

Intentionally or not, Trump showed that his supporters, nearly half of the nation, will accept outrageous actions if the actions appear to support white supremacy.

The tasks before us include diminishing Trumpism as well as adjusting the Supreme Court.

 • • •• • •

Wornie Reed is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies and Director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center at Virginia Tech University. Previously he developed and directed the Urban Child Research Center in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University (1991-2001), where he was also Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies (1991-2004). He was Adjunct Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (2003-4). Professor Reed served a three-year term (1990-92) as President of the National Congress of Black Faculty, and he is past president of the National Association of Black Sociologists (2000-01).

This column first appeared online at What the Data Say and is shared here by permission.