bills back when marriage equality was being debated many yearsing a. suddenly they re making a comeback. how do you explain that? i think some of it is because of the i abortion bill in texas. and what happened with this abortion bobill, remember you he these very trumpy governors. and in texas you had abbott. and abbott made this bill that wasd crazy and had all sorts o stuff. and the supreme court was like, well, you e know, we agree with it, so we re not going you know, it s a lot of very smart people are completely nutty. and i think when they do that, n lot of these trumpy governors saw there was really a window open for them to do whatever they wanted and the conservative court to agree with it. remember this court is now trumpy justices and two conservative justices. now they ll rubber stamp any kind of very conservative thing. so, i think there s a sort of race. and remember also desantis
against voting rights. he offered the majority opinion which effectively ended the preclearance process, gutting a major part of the voting rights act. last summer, roberts joined his colleagues in upholding arizona s voting restrictions. how did the conservatives on the court manage to lose this guy? well, we should be clear here for a moment. it is not that roberts disagreer with his fellow conservatives on the substance of the alabama case. no, in fact t his opinion hinte that he s f open to reconsider e governing standard used by the lower court. his real problem here is more about strategy. chief justice roberts didn t like that his fellow conservatives usedhi the court ominous shadow docket to reversh the lower court s decision. basically what roberts is saying here is that you can strip black and brown people of their representation, but maybe try to do it in a less obvious way.
chief justice, john roberts, sided with the liberals, and that s pretty significant. let me explain why. back in 1981, john roberts joined the justice department as a special assistant to the attorney general, focusing on voting rights. now, at the time, there was a battle in congress over the reauthorization of parts of the battle in congress over th reauthorizat underway in congress overion of reauthorization ofre parts of t 1965 votes rights act. congress wanted to make it easier for voters to fight discriminatory practice. roberts was tapped by the reagan administration to lead the charge against that effort. he drafted dozens of speeches, op-eds, and talking points. in fact, in one of those memos, the future justice said the changes wouldre lead to a quote quota system for those who held elected office. it s important to note that roberts and company actually failed back then. in 1982 the reauthorization passed with bipartisan support. once appointed to the court, roberts continue