John Lewis saw John Roberts' assault on the Voting Rights Act coming.

The MAGA Court's hostility to democracy has long been clear -- and so has the need for real Supreme Court reform

Almost exactly twenty years ago, the United States Senate held hearings to assess then-President George W. Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice of the United States. During those 2005 hearings, Senators questioned Roberts about his decades-long hostility to the Voting Rights Act, the tentpole of American democracy the Senate would reauthorize the next year by a vote of 98-0. Roberts insisted he was in fact a strong supporter of the VRA who agreed it was constitutional.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY. I am just trying to find out, on the Voting Rights Act, whether you have any problem at all or are troubled by the constitutionality of the existing Voting Rights Act that was extended by the Congress—

JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS. Oh, well, the existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld—

SENATOR KENNEDY. Okay.

JUDGE ROBERTS.—and I don’t have any issue with that.

Later, Roberts professed support for voting rights as among “the most precious rights we have as Americans”:

SENATOR KENNEDY: Let’s start with the Voting Rights Act. Most Americans think that the right to vote is among the most important tools that they have to participate in our democracy. You do agree, don’t you, Judge Roberts, that the right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right?

JUDGE ROBERTS. It is preservative, I think, of all the other rights. Without access to the ballot box, people are not in the position to protect any other rights that are important to them. And so I think it’s one of, as you said, the most precious rights we have as Americans.

As the hearings continued, Senator Kennedy referenced memos Roberts had written as a Reagan administration official hostile to the Voting Rights Act, noting: “I am deeply troubled by the narrow and cramped, and perhaps even a mean-spirited view of the law that appears in some of your writings. … it appears that you did not fully appreciate the problem of dis crimination in our society. It also seems that you were trying to undo the progress that so many people had fought for and died for in this country.”

Roberts repeatedly insisted he was just doing his job and the memos did not reflect his personal views:

JUDGE ROBERTS. Senator, you keep referring to what I supported and what I wanted to do. I was a 26-year-old staff lawyer. It was my first job as a lawyer after my clerkships. I was not shaping administration policy. The administration policy was shaped by the Attorney General on whose staff I served. It was the policy of President Reagan. It was to extend the Voting Rights Act without change for the longest period in history at that point, and it was my job to promote the Attorney General’s view and the President’s view on that issue. And that’s what I was doing.

Throughout the hearings, Roberts portrayed himself as a supporter of the Voting Rights Act, and assured the Senate he had no basis for questioning the constitutionality of Section 2 of the VRA:

JUDGE ROBERTS. I am not aware of any constitutional challenge that has been brought to Section 2 since it was enacted. I’ve not—I have no basis for viewing it as constitutionally suspect and I don’t.

Republican Senators leapt to Roberts’ assistance, declaring their own strong support for the Voting Rights Act and attempting to rebut criticism of Roberts’ record of skepticism:

SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS. Well, the Voting Rights Act, let me say, is a tremendous critical, historical event. It transformed the South. I think Senator Kennedy or others said that grandchildren and children today are being able to vote because of this right, and that is true. Not only are they being able to vote, they are being able to be judges who supervise elections, sheriffs, mayors, city councilmen, county commissioners. Alabama has more elected African-American officeholders than any other State in America, and we are proud of that. But this was a powerful Act, and it did change the makeup of county commissions, city commissions, statewide boards, all over Alabama, all over America, and it was a big step.

John Lewis didn’t buy it. Lewis served in the House of Representatives at the time, so he didn’t get a vote on Roberts’ nomination, but he testified to the committee as a leader of the civil rights movement:

REP. JOHN LEWIS: In 1965, Jurist Roberts was only 10-years-old. He may be a brilliant lawyer, but I wonder whether he can really understand the depth of what it took to get the Voting Rights Act passed. The right to vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society.

As many of you know, I gave a little blood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but some of my friends and colleagues gave all they had, their very lives for the right to vote. …

I feel that if Judge Roberts is confirmed to be the Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court would no longer hear the people’s cries for justice. I feel that the leadership of the Court will promote politics over the protection of individual rights and liberties. If the Federal Courts had abandoned us in the civil rights movement in the name of judicial restraint, we might still be struggling with the burden of legal segregation in America today.

Jurist Roberts’s memos reveal him to be hostile towards civil rights, affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. He has even said that Voting Rights Act violations, and I quote, ‘‘should not be made too easy to prove.’

(…)

Section 2 has been successful in reducing barriers, and has increased the number of minority elected officials. There is no doubt, Mr. Chairman, in my mind, that had Judge Roberts’s narrow reading of the Voting Rights Act prevailed, fewer people of color would be serving in Congress and at both the State and local level today.

(…)

All Americans, every race or every religion or nationality, whether they are women or men, gay or straight, or people with disabilities, all of us need equal access to a fair and independent judiciary to assure equal justice under the law.

The stakes are higher than ever. We cannot afford to elevate an individual to such a powerful lifetime position whose record demonstrates such a strong desire to reverse the hard-won civil rights gains that so many of us sacrificed so much to achieve. We have come a great distance. We cannot afford to stand still. We cannot afford to go back. We must go forward to the creation of one America.

Then the Senate confirmed John Roberts, with many of the Senators who professed their deep support for the VRA voting to confirm him, and Roberts got to work taking a pair of scissors to the Voting Rights Act. Roberts authored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that gutted the Act in 2013, and led the Court through several rulings that weakened or killed off what was left of the act. During oral arguments this week in Louisiana v. Callais, Roberts and his fellow conservatives signaled an eagerness to wipe out Section 2 — the same part of the Voting Rights Act Roberts assured the Senate he had no basis for viewing as constitutionally suspect.

It was clear in 2005 that John Roberts was coming for the Voting Rights Act. It was clear in 2021 that without meaningful Supreme Court reform, Roberts and his fellow MAGA justices would continue their assault on American democracy. And it is clear today that our next chance at reform might be our last.