House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries railed against the Supreme Court Wednesday over its 6-3 ruling that threw out Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered congressional district, telling reporters some of the justices are haunted by the spirits of those who embraced enslaving Americans.
“The ghost of the Confederacy has afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority and is invading and haunting the nation right now, and we take that seriously,” Mr. Jeffries said.
Mr. Jeffries, who is Black, said the Supreme Court’s decision limiting the scope of the Voting Rights Act has led to “a return to Jim Crow-like segregation tactics in the Deep South” that, he said, Republicans would gladly implement across the U.S. if it were possible.
Wiping out majority-Black congressional districts, Mr. Jeffries said, is “an assault on free and fair elections, an assault on racial progress in America and an assault on Black representation and the ability of African Americans to actually simply elect the candidate of their choice.”
Republican-led southern states have moved quickly to carve new congressional districts favoring GOP candidates after the Supreme Court’s seismic ruling that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to force states to add more minority districts unless there is clear evidence of discrimination.
The high court’s ruling invalidated one of Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered districts, spurring the state to quickly redraw the district’s lines in favor of a GOP candidate.
Tennessee and Alabama also rushed to carve new GOP-leaning congressional seats in the wake of the ruling. South Carolina and Mississippi, too, are considering gerrymandering congressional districts, all ahead of the November election that will determine control of the U.S. House.
In all, six congressional districts drawn to ensure minority representation in Congress have been eliminated so far in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling.
Mr. Jeffries said the GOP redistricting push shows Republicans “have clearly chosen a strategy of needing to cheat to win,” and warned that Democrats “are going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism they are trying to unleash on the American people.”
Democrats say their own recent gerrymandering in California and Virginia was fair because the new congressional districts were approved by voters. Special elections created four additional Democrat-leaning seats in Virginia and five in California. But the Virginia Supreme Court last week tossed out the state’s new map.
Republicans on Thursday defended the elimination of racially gerrymandered districts, saying they violate the Constitution.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, pointed out Democrats have been ridding states of GOP-leaning congressional districts for decades.
“We find it amusing that Democrats are suddenly concerned about fair congressional representation,” Mr. Johnson said. “And I challenge those Democrats to raise those concerns with the Republican congressmen from Massachusetts, Connecticut or Rhode Island. They’ll have a hard time doing that, of course, because Democrats have gerrymandered Republicans completely out of those states.”
