#Chicago is choosing #justice over fear, as it has in the past

In 1850, the #FederalGovernment deputized local officials to enforce #slavery. In 2025, it demands cooperation in #deportation. Chicago resisted nearly two centuries ago, & it still is today.

#Resist #Trump #law #immigration #RightToProtest #MilitaryState #ICE #CBP #Gestapo #Sturmabteilung #fascism #terrorism #authoritarianism #autocracy #tyranny #WhiteSupremacy
https://chicago.suntimes.com/other-views/2025/10/13/chicago-fugitive-slave-act-ice-fuentes-immigration-claudia-fegan-linda-rae-murray

“It does feel to me a little bit like #CitizensUnited in that, if you recall the way Citizens United unfolded, it was initially a narrow First Amendment challenge,” said Donald Verrilli, who served as the Obama admin’s top #SCOTUS lawyer & defended the #VotingRights #law in the 2013 case.

#ActivistCourt #VRA #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

Restricting or eliminating most claims of racial #discrimination in #federal courts would give #state legislatures wide latitude to draw districts, subject only to state constitutional limits.

A shift of just one vote from the #Alabama case would flip the outcome.

With the call for new arguments, #Louisiana changed its position & is no longer defending its map.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

Among the possible outcomes in the #Louisiana case, Verrilli said, is one in which a majority holds that the need for courts to step into #redistricting cases, absent [proof of] intentional #discrimination, has essentially expired. #Kavanaugh raised the issue briefly 2 years ago.

#SCOTUS has separately washed its hands of partisan #gerrymandering claims, in a 2019 opinion that also was written by #JohnRoberts.

#law #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

The #Trump admin joined on #Louisiana’s side. The #DOJ had previously defended the #VotingRights #law under administrations of both major political parties.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #WhiteSupremacy

The conservative-dominated court, which just two years ago ended #AffirmativeAction in college admissions, could be receptive. At the center of the legal fight is Chief Justice #JohnRoberts, who has long had the landmark #CivilRights law in his sights, from his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan-era #DOJ to his current job.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

In arguments Wednesday, lawyers for #Louisiana & the #Trump admin will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state’s second majority #Black congressional district & make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of #race in #redistricting.

“Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution,” Louisiana AG Elizabeth Murrill wrote in the state’s Supreme Court filing.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #VotingRights

#SCOTUS takes up #Republican attack on #VotingRightsAct in case over #Black representation

A Republican attack on a core provision of the #VRA that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to SCOTUS this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old #law.

#gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #VotingRights
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-voting-rights-race-louisiana-348260f08099d087bcde4a93140aa8b2

The challenged provision relies on “current conditions”

Challenges under the provision known as Section 2 of the #VRA #law must be able to show current racially polarized voting & an inability of minority populations to elect candidates of their choosing, among other factors.

“Race is still very much a factor in current voting patterns in the state of Louisiana. It’s true in many places in the country,” said Sarah Brannon, deputy director of the ACLU’s #VotingRights Project.

#SCOTUS

“Our country has changed, & while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” #JohnRoberts wrote [from his rich #WhitePrivilege perch].

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” #JohnRoberts wrote in a dissenting opinion in 2006 in his first major #VotingRights case as chief justice.

In 2013, Roberts wrote for the majority in gutting the landmark law’s requirement that states & local governments with a history of #discrimination, mostly in the South, get approval before making any election-related changes.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

That might have settled things, but a group of #white voters complained that #race, not #politics, was the predominant factor driving the new #Louisiana map. A 3-judge court agreed, leading to the current #SCOTUS case.
Instead of deciding the case in June, the justices asked the parties to answer a potentially big question: “Whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the US #Constitution.”

#law

#Louisiana appealed to #SCOTUS but
eventually added a second majority Black district after the justices’ 5-4 ruling in 2023 that found a likely violation of the #VotingRightsAct in a similar case over Alabama’s congressional map.

#JohnRoberts & Justice Brett #Kavanaugh joined their 3 more liberal colleagues in the #Alabama outcome. Roberts rejected what he described as “Alabama’s attempt to remake our section 2 jurisprudence anew.”

#law #VRA #VotingRights #RepresentationMatters #WhiteSupremacy

The #Louisiana case got to this point only after #Black voters & #CivilRights groups sued & won lower court rulings striking down the first congressional map drawn by the state’s #GOP-controlled Legislature after the 2020 census. That map created just one Black majority district among 6 House seats in a state that is ⅓ #Black.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

A second round of arguments is rare at the Supreme Court

The call for new arguments sometimes presages a major change by the high court. The #CitizensUnited decision in 2010 that led to dramatic increases in independent spending in US #elections came after it was argued a second time.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #VotingRights #gerrymandering #RepresentationMatters #Trump #WhiteSupremacy

Those amendments, adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War, were intended to bring about political #equality for #Black Americans & gave #Congress the authority to take all necessary steps. Nearly a century later, Congress passed the #VotingRightsAct of 1965, called the crown jewel of the #CivilRights era, to finally put an end to persistent efforts to prevent Black people from voting in the fmr states of the Confederacy.

#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #VRA #RepresentationMatters #WhiteSupremacy

Each time they arrived, the vehicles were already gone.

They said at least one person had been taken by federal agents at the intersection of Wilson & Sawyer, but another had gotten away during the response.

“This is part of the chaos they like to bring to our communities. That person was saved due to the efforts of our communities, but unfortunately, somebody was [still] #kidnapped from our neighborhood today,”Guzmán said.

#Trump #law #immigration #StateSponsoredAbduction #ICE #Gestapo

“We chased federal agents out of #AlbanyPark today,” a person shouted to a cheer from the dozens of residents who were out on the street.

Then a whistle blew several blocks over, followed by shouts. Minutes later, there were more shouts.

Ald Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd) led the crowd of rapid responders, some on bikes & others w/ dogs, as she sprinted toward each call w/ state Sen Graciela Guzmán, D-#Chicago, following behind her.

#Trump #law #RightToProtest #ICE #CBP #Gestapo #fascism

#TearGas still hung in the air as #AlbanyPark neighbors & elected ofcls hugged & cried, processing the scene they had just witnessed Sunday afternoon after at least 4 vehicles full of federal agents had taken a man & tear gassed their neighborhood as residents responded.

A man spoke to #Chicago police officers in the 3200 block of W Wilson while his hands bled after being shoved to the ground by federal agents.

#Trump #law #RightToProtest #MilitaryState #ICE #Gestapo #PoliceBrutality #fascism

Feds deploy #TearGas in another #Chicago neighborhood: 'We chased federal agents out of #AlbanyPark today'

A federal judge’s temporary restraining order requires federal agents to issue 2 warnings before using riot control weapons such as tear gas. Witnesses says they didn’t get any warning.

#Trump #law #FreedomOfAssembly #RightToProtest #MilitaryState #ICE #CBP #Gestapo #Sturmabteilung #PoliceBrutality #terrorism #authoritarianism #autocracy #tyranny #WhiteSupremacy
https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/12/ice-chicago-albany-park-tear-gas