Supreme court refuses to do its job…again
The People Spoke: The Supreme Court Refused to Listen
The purpose of the Supreme Court is to ensure that those living within our boundaries have equal protection under the law. The Court also functions as the guardian and interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court was built as a check on both the Legislative and Executive branch of the government, functioning to keep a balance between individual rights and the need for order in a civilized society.
Instead, the Supreme Court has consistently expanded the power of the federal government, reduced the rights of the individual citizen, and become a beacon for partisan politics. It only protects some individual rights while allowing Federal and State governments to freely violate the rights of the average American.
Citizens are not able to sue state governments and are barred from voting to change the leadership of their local governments.
One recent example of this is with the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear laws related to voter suppression.
When we think about voter suppression, we think about strict photo ID laws, gerrymandering, or refusing to accept mail-in ballots. We often don’t think about the requirement of payment of fines or fees as a condition of vote restoration.
This is exactly what the state of Florida is doing as it has barred hundreds of thousands of residents from voting without first paying their court fines and fees.
The Fines & Fees Justice center has found that Florida courts had “115 different types of fees and surcharges, the second-highest number in the country.” This means that Florida felons must pay back hundreds of millions of dollars to restore their voting rights.
What makes this situation worse is that Florida state officials admitted that they could not easily track how much someone owed in fines and fees because documentation was scattered across multiple county agencies. U.S District Court Judge Robert Hinkle noted that “even with a team of attorneys and unlimited time, the State has been unable to show how much each plaintiff must pay to vote under the State’s view of the law.”
Judge Hinkle ruled that blocking offenders who are too poor to pay their fines is discriminatory. Florida’s rule violates both the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the 24th Amendment’s prohibition on poll taxes, according to Judge Hinkle.
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any “State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The 15th Amendment reads: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay on the order after the Florida government appealed.
The Campaign Legal Center petitioned the Supreme Court to lift the stay. On July 16, the Supreme Court, by a 6–3 vote, declined to intervene. This was the 4th time since April that the Supreme Court made it more difficult for Americans to vote.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to interfere is very telling and reminiscent of our history.
An estimated 775,000 Florida residents with felony records are affected by this ruling. This is a very significant number, as the difference in votes between Trump and Clinton in the 2016 election was just 112,911.
Florida Citizens Want Voting Rights Restored
The decision to enforce payment of court fines and fees before being allowed to vote comes after two-thirds of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment designed to restore voting rights to felons. The law reads: “voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.”
Paul Smith, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center stated, “Florida’s voters spoke loud and clear when nearly two-thirds of them supported rights restoration at the ballot box in 2018. The Supreme Court stood by as the Eleventh Circuit prevented hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they can’t afford to pay fines and fees.”
These types of laws came about due to reduced federal enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, born from the Civil War.
Florida was only a handful of states that enforced a lifetime voting ban for individuals with a felony record. Amendment 4, as described earlier, sought to help remedy this ban.
Opponents of the Amendment immediately exploited a loophole arguing that the new law did not say whether or not these terms included court fines and fees.
Voter suppression is unconstitutional.
Florida has a history of voter suppression. During the Jim Crow era, Florida along with Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas required proof of payment of a poll tax before registering to vote.
The poll tax in Texas in 1902 was between $1.50 to $1.75. This was a significant amount of money at the time, serving as a big barrier between the working class and the poor. The tax was specifically created to prevent Blacks from voting.
These types of laws came about due to reduced federal enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, born from the Civil War.
Protecting and Expanding the Federal Government
The Supreme Court’s refusal to interfere is very telling and reminiscent of our history.
The Supreme Court refused to hear eight separate cases relating to Qualified Immunity. Qualified Immunity gives government officials the right to be immune from violating the rights of citizens, as long as they violated those rights in a way that was not done before.
The Supreme Court also refused to hear 10 different cases related to expanding gun rights. These cases would have been major Second Amendment cases, one of which challenged New Jersey’s concealed carry laws.
In 2018, the Supreme Court refused to hear cases relating to Planned Parenthood. These cases were not at all abortion-related but instead were concerned with whether or not a Medicaid patient can challenge a state decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood clinics.
The common thread in all of these laws is the idea of a citizen being allowed to challenge the government. As it stands today, it is very difficult for a U.S., citizen to sue a government official, or local government, much less take action against the federal government.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court agreed to expedite an order on President Trump’s tax returns, an issue that will not affect the average American.
While the Supreme Court continues to hear cases that are politically popular, it refuses to step in to protect the rights of individual citizens. The Government has grown too powerful. We are seeing the effects of this on our streets as police officers are not being held accountable for their actions due to qualified immunity. Citizens are not able to sue state governments and are barred from voting to change the leadership of their local governments.
