5 to 4

[cos]

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to deal a blow to the Voting Rights Act, and 5-4 to do the same to DOMA. Justices Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito, were in the majority to thwack voting rights, and in the minority to keep marriage discrimination; Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, were in the minority wanting to protect voting rights, and in the majority for equal rights.

One more Obama appointee on the Supreme Court, and the Voting Rights Act would've survived unharmed.

One McCain or Romney appointee, and the VRA would've been thwacked but DOMA remained fully in force.

Keep that in mind in 2016.

Comments

[drwex]

It's true that the Court, like the politics of the country in general, has trended significantly more conservative in the past couple decades. That any progress at all has been made on social justice issues is something of a miracle. The makeup of the Court follows the makeup of the Senate, more or less inevitably.

But that still doesn't change the basic premise, which is that you cannot predict from the appointing president which way a Justice is going to vote on a given issue.