MADISON, Wis. — On Wednesday, April 29th, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to strip protections from the Voting Rights Act which, since 1965, has protected racial minorities from discriminatory redistricting.
Representative Randy Udell (D-47th District) released the following statement:
“This week, the Supreme Court shredded the Voting Rights Act by allowing Jim-Crow-Era racial gerrymandering back into our country. This decision enables insidious, racist, post-Civil-War methods of denying racial minorities political representation. Repeatedly, this SCOTUS has failed to uphold voting rights, whether ignoring inappropriate voter-role purges or allowing states to selectively shutter polling locations.
“Already, the Florida Legislature has passed a new gerrymandered map, despite the Florida Constitution itself banning gerrymandering. We are in the midst of a national gerrymandering crisis that began when the Texas Legislature passed mid-decade Congressional maps, and the Supreme Court has poured gasoline on this fire.
“It is a bold-faced power grab by explicitly racist fascists. Over and over again, the warnings about a conservative Supreme Court’s authoritarian plans for the United States – warnings that were labeled hysterical or ridiculous – have been proven absolutely correct.”
