according to this account based on leaked SCOTUS memos, the shadow docket was created in 2016 when SCOTUS rushed to block a major energy regulation by Obama
in that case, SCOTUS worried about the irreparable harm Obama policy might cause people
now, SCOTUS acts like the only relevant harm is blocking the government's policies, ignoring the effect of those (possibly illegal) policies on the people, e.g., tariffs, impoundment of federal appropriations and grants and mass firings
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...&smid=bs-shareJust after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a cryptic, one paragraph ruling that sent both climate policy and the court itself spinning in new directions.
For two centuries, the court had generally handled major cases at a stately pace that encouraged care and deliberation, relying on written briefs, oral arguments and in-person discussions. The justices composed detailed opinions that explained their thinking to the public and rendered judgment only after other courts had weighed in.
But this time, the justices were sprinting to block a major presidential initiative. By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his signature environmental policy. They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.
At the time, the ruling seemed like a curious one-off. But that single paragraph turned out to be a sharp and lasting break. That night marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern “shadow docket,” the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting President Trump more than 20 key victories on issues from immigration to agency power.
now, SCOTUS has its finger on the scale for the government
“Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector before this court has an opportunity to review its legality,” he wrote.
expand the court, strip jurisdiction
anyway, if this court is going to act as little more than a partisan legislature than it ought to be treated like one by the actual legislature
"Munsingwear vacatur"
yet another way SCOTUS functions as a super-legislature
htps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4393097Over the past two years the United States Supreme Court has erased thirteen politically and legally significant opinions written by the federal appeals courts. In vacating rather than simply denying certiorari, the Court eliminated—with one sentence orders that offer no explanation—fully briefed, argued, and reasoned opinions on issues like abortion, the Voting Rights Act, Trump’s travel ban, and the Emoluments Clause
the aforementioned grants and impoundments
Justice Jackson's "Calvinball"" comment came during an NIH case
let’s remember the shadow docket grievously harmed American scientific research, cancer cures, and public health over the past year.
SCOTUS makes the VRA so narrow Article 2 can barely be applied.
In this case as in the Texas case the majority ignored detailed factual evidence of discriminatory intent.
The practical effect is likely to be that black/hispanic folks don't get to vote for representatives of their choice unless they're Republicans -- SCOTUS has blessed racial vote dilution so long as it purports to be partisan.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...4-109_21o3.pdf
A half century of progress toward social equality was entirely too much for John Roberts and Republican justices
this is some Jim Crow where rights exist on paper but can't be enforced if statutory language is race-neutral and state legislators don't tell on themselves
Background:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/u...&smid=bs-shareThe Voting Rights Act, among the most consequential pieces of U.S. civil rights legislation, was signed into law in August 1965. It came nearly a century after the 15th Amendment outlawed racial discrimination in voting in 1870.
Despite the amendment, Black Americans had continued to face barriers to one of the nation’s most fundamental rights even after ratification, including violence and intimidation, poll taxes and literacy tests. For many decades before the federal law was passed, activists marched, protested and organized voter registration campaigns. Some were brutally beaten or murdered.
The act required some state and local governments, mostly in the South, to get federal approval before changing their voting laws. It also prohibited election or voting practices that discriminate based on race, which eventually led some states to draw new congressional maps with districts that have a majority of Black voters.
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The first Black lawmaker was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870. But most Black Americans who have served in Congress were elected after the Voting Rights Act, though not all of those representatives were from states directly affected by the act.
The first two Black Southerners to win House seats after the law passed — in fact, since the late 1800s — both won after their districts were redrawn to follow the law.
Alito also notes that Black turnout reached near parity with White turnout in 2 of the past 5 presidential elections.
But which two, Justice Alito??
Oh, the LAST TWO before Shelby County? You don't say!
Last edited by Winehole23; 04-29-2026 at 06:33 PM.
Alito wrote some straight up bull about this
The black/white turnout gap has been increasing since Shelby
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/739960
SCOTUS doesn't think so
Radical Republicans are repealing the Reconstruction
minutes after SCOTUS declared racism over in Callais, Alabama pols call for a special legislative session to abolish black representation
https://www.al.com/politics/2026/04/...me-to-act.htmlAlabama Attorney General Steve Marshal said the state “will act as quickly as possible to apply this ruling to Alabama’s redistricting efforts and ensure that our congressional maps reflect the will of the people, not a racial quota system the Cons ution forbids.”
historical voting restrictions versus turnout in Louisiana
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...DC2F6E3CBF61FD
preventing blacks from getting representation in Louisiana isn't racist -- but according to SCOTUS, preventing Louisiana from doing so would be
primary voting has already started in Louisiana
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...d-jeff-landry/Louisiana governor prepares to suspend House primaries after court ruling
Gov. Jeff Landry (R) told Republican House candidates he plans to suspend the May 1map
so then, 100,000 early votes get sh!tcanned because majority black districts are racist
but not majority white districts, for some reason
nor districts drawn to exclude black folks and remove their representatives
nor offices removed by legislation after a black person wins
moar Jim Crow
https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/gene...on/ar-AA228y3J
SCOTUS has rendered the 15th Amendment a dead letter
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/o...smid=url-shareWith its decision this week in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted a core part of the Voting Rights Act, Congress’s landmark prohibition on voting rules that have the effect of excluding people of color from the political process. In doing so, the court has, not for the first time, claimed an authority to reject laws passed by Congress in service of equal justice and a free society.
And it has effectively killed the Second Reconstruction, the mid-20th-century civil rights revolution. In the face of this decision, Congress must once again defend democracy from a hostile court. A plan of action already exists.
Last edited by Winehole23; 4 Weeks Ago at 09:07 AM.
The solution?
Congress passing laws to limit the court's jurisdiction, protect the people's rights and uphold the law
When the postwar court appeared likely to challenge legislation Congress considered “appropriate” to enforce these amendments, Congress changed the size of the court. The House of Representatives then passed a bill that prohibited the court from invalidating any federal law without the concurrence of two-thirds of the justices. Representative John Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the 14th Amendment, insisted that such a requirement was necessary to prevent a second Dred Scottdecision. Some members agreed but pushed for a unanimity rule (concurrence among all the justices) instead.
In the Senate, the author of the 13th Amendment, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, proposed that Congress declare its Reconstruction Acts “political in their character, the propriety or validity of which no judicial tribunal is competent to question.” As the threat from one pending Supreme Court case became urgent, Congress enacted a narrower but decisive measure stripping the court of appellate jurisdiction over the particular challenge before it.
That strategy worked. Disciplined by Congress, the court declined to interfere with its abolition or Reconstruction Acts. As federal prosecutors and lower courts enforced these statutes, over 750,000 Black Americans voted for the first time. Black men even took seats in Congress, where they helped draft and pass the nation’s first national voting rights laws.
Last edited by Winehole23; 4 Weeks Ago at 09:08 AM.
the mind-blowing thing is that the meticulous record before SCOTUS detailed the racial animus in Texas and Louisiana and *they just ignored it*
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