OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Supreme Court has given a crippling blow to a group that was challenging the congressional Texas maps as racist. On Monday the Court dismissed the case that claimed that the maps were drawn to dilute minority voting power, CNN reported.
At the center of the dispute is Senate District 10, which is centered in Fort Worth in Tarrant County. Challengers argued the map was redrawn to make it more Republican and “more Anglo.” A panel of three judges on a district court conducted four days of hearings and held although the new state Senate map may “disproportionately affect minority voters” in Tarrant County, and although the legislature may have given “pretextual reasons” for its redistricting decisions, the challengers could point to no evidence indicating that the legislature’s “true intent was racial.”
The voting rights groups asked the court to take the case and said that it was too high of a burden to prove that race was the predominant factor in drawing the maps.
It comes days after a former anti-abortion leader alleged that the person who leaked a Supreme Court decision prior to the decision on Roe V Wade ending has been found, and it is a bombshell.
Rev. Rob Schenck said, in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts and in interviews with The New York Times, that he was informed of a decision in 2014 on a case involving contraception and religious rights weeks before the decision was announced, The New York Times reported.
“He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case,” The Times said.
Both of the decisions, this one and the one that ended Roe V Wade, were penned by Justice Samuel Alito but unlike the Roe V Wade decision, which was leaked by Politico, the 2014 decision was only shared with a handful of people.
The insinuation by the reverend in his letter to the Chief Justice was that it was Justice Alito who leaked the 2014 decision.
“Dear Chief Justice Roberts,
“There is no reason you would remember our brief encounters over the years, but we have met and exchanged pleasantries on several occasions over your tenure at the Court. I write to inform you of a series of events that may impinge on the investigation you and your delegates are undertaking in connection with the leak of a draft opinion,” the reverend said.
“Back in June 2014, when so many awaited the Court’s opinion in Burwell Hobby Lobby, was informed by a donor to the Capitol Hill-based non-profit organization led that she and her husband would be dining at the home of Justice and Mrs. Alito. She suggested that in their table conversation, she might be able to learn the status of the case, something she knew had an interest in knowing. I received a follow -up message from her notifying me she had indeed obtained the information during that visit. We spoke on the phone, and she detailed the revelation. As recall, we talked about the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, and how they, too, would be interested in this information,” he said.
“Over the ensuing three weeks, kept this sensitive information to myself, undetectably using it to assist me in preparing for the inevitable announcement. Then, a day or two before the opinion was released, I called Mr. Steve Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby, and reported what knew of the Courts finding. He thanked me, and we did not speak again about it until October of that year.
“Considering there may be a severe penalty to be paid by whoever is responsible for the initial leak of the recent draft opinion, thought this previous incident might bear some consideration by you and others involved in the process. Of course, I would be happy to fully cooperate should you find any value in other details surrounding what I have transmitted here,” he said.
