Legal expert taken aback by Supreme Court Justice’s ‘furious’ dissent: ‘Like a dirge’

A legal expert was taken aback on Thursday by the dissent filed by a Supreme Court Justice in a recent voting rights case. Adam Klasfeld, editor in chief of “All Rise News,” argued during a new podcast episode that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had correctly surmised that the court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais had effectively gutted the remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act, which he described as the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Era. He noted that Kagan’s dissent was “furious” yet sounded “like a dirge” at times. Klasfeld noted several points in Kagan’s dissent in which she explained how the decision would make it much more difficult for plaintiffs to challenge discriminatory electoral maps. While there were many technical arguments throughout, Klasfeld flagged the plain and somber tone Kagan struck at the end. “She ended her dissent with a very common saying, ‘I dissent,’ but how she ends it is a bit like a durge,” Klasfeld said. I’m going to read it: ‘At this last stage, the court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril. I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent because the court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.'”

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