Three opinions from the Supreme Court

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up: Three opinions handed down last week by the U-S Supreme Court.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The first ruling raises the standard for what’s needed to challenge political maps as racial gerrymanders.

In a 6-3 vote, the majority finds that South Carolina’s newly drawn congressional districts are constitutional.

EICHER: The Constitution gives state legislatures power to draw congressional districts and by its nature that is political. But legal precedent says those maps cannot be drawn based predominantly on race considerations.

In a state where more than 90% of black voters vote Democrat, figuring out whether race or political preference predominates in the minds of mapmakers is tricky.

REICHARD: The high court says in those situations, challengers to the maps must “disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship.” The challengers to the maps had no direct evidence of racial bias and circumstantial evidence was weak.

You can hear the eventual ruling in this from Chief Justice John Roberts during oral argument last October:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: We've never had a case where there's been no direct evidence, no map, no strangely configured districts. Very large amount of political evidence, whether the district court chose to credit it or not, and instead it all resting on circumstantial evidence. I'm not saying you can't get there. But it does seem that this would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence.

EICHER: So the upshot of this is that the Republican incumbent Congresswoman Nancy Mace has a much-better chance to retain her seat.

Dissenting justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They accused the majority of giving legislatures reason to use race as a proxy to get what they want. The case is reversed in part, and remanded in part to correct errors of the lower court.

REICHARD: This second decision also 6-3 is a loss for two men challenging the federal law known as ACCA, the Armed Career Criminal Act. That law mandates a 15 year minimum sentence on a three-time felon with a history of criminal violence.

The convicted men here argued their drug convictions don’t qualify as priors because those were state law convictions, not federal. But the Supreme Court disagreed, finding state convictions do count for purposes of ACCA so long as the drug involved was on the federal schedule at the time of conviction.

EICHER: This final opinion is unanimous, a loss for Coinbase, operator of a cryptocurrency exchange platform. The company ran a sweepstakes that consumers say misled them. Some users felt tricked into paying $100 to enter. The dispute is over two contracts that say different things; one saying any dispute must go through arbitration, the other saying any dispute goes through California courts. Which one prevailed was the question for the justices, and all nine agreed that a court has to make that determination of which contract controls.

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