0 bipartisan margins. but today in a 5-4 majority decision, authored by chief justice john roberts, a man who has expressed skepticism toward the voting rights act from the time he was a young lawyer in the reagan justice department. the court decided that the formula congress passed is unconstitutional. that congress just did it wrong. they didn t like their math. this despite the fact that the 15th amendment for which hundreds of thousands of americans died, and which explicitly gives congress the authority to enforce right to vote, despite the plain text of that part of the constitution, nope, said roberts and alito and thomas and kennedy and scalia. we don t like the way you did it. so they struck it down. and then said to congress, if you want to keep that law, you seem to like so much, then fix it in a way that we like. if that sounds ambiguous, complicated, it is ambiguous and complicated. it is by design. let s be very clear about what that means. what the roberts court majorit
race discrimination which it thought was prevalent in certain jurisdictions. so to that extent as the intervenor said, yes, it was intended to protect those who had been discriminated against. if i might say, i think that do you think that racial discrimination in voting has ended? that there is none anywhere? i think the world is not perfect. julie, was she speaking to him or was she speaking to justice scalia? what was going on? where was she looking when she said that? i think often the justices, and in this case likely too, they are talking to each other as much as they re talking to the litigants. using him as a means as sort of a prop in a sense, not a nice word, but just as an opportunity to have a conversation so they can talk to each other about what s really going on. but i do think i want to say what s really going on here are two things. one is there is a case to be made there is continuing voting discrimination in states all
whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. joining me now are two people who were in the courtroom for the arguments. julie fernandes, a former deputy attorney general in the civil rights division of the justice department, and dale ho of the naacp legal defense and education fund who has worked on this case from the beginning. julie, take me in the supreme court. what was the body language? what was the vibe when they get into it? meaning justices scalia and sotomayor and kagan? i think that a lot of people were surprised to hear justice scalia refer to the voting rights act as a racial entitlement. i think that the language no one knows exactly what he was thinking, but the word entitlement suggests that somehow you are getting something that you didn t earn. for many of us we think of the voting rights act and the right to vote as sort of an equality mandate for all americans. it s an equality
vote is a racial entitlement in section 5? no, the 15th amendment protects the right of all to vote and i asked a different question. do you think section 5 was voted for because it was a racial entitlement? well, congress you think there was no basis to find that may i say congress was reacting in 1964 to a problem of race discrimination which it thought was prevalent in certain jurisdictions. so to that extent as the intervenor said, yes, it was intended to protect those who had been discriminated against. if i might say, i think that do you think that racial discrimination in voting has ended? that there is none anywhere? i think the world is not perfect. julie, was she speaking to him or was she speaking to justice scalia? what was going on? where was she looking when she said that? i think often the justices, and in this case likely too, they are talking to each other as much as they re talking to
and the house is pretty much the same. now, i don t think that s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. i think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. it s been written about. whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. joining me now are two people who were in the courtroom for the arguments. julie fernandes, a former deputy attorney general in the civil rights division of the justice department, and dale ho of the naacp legal defense and education fund who has worked on this case from the beginning. julie, take me in the supreme court. what was the body language? what was the vibe when they get into it? meaning justices scalia and