Over the past two decades, the Roberts Court has pioneered and perfected the practice: #Sanewashing
—defined as “attempting to minimize or downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public”
—It has become a prominent, if entirely underappreciated, feature of the Roberts Court.
Relying on judicial sanewashing, the Roberts Court has ERODED:
#due #process protections,
political #accountability,
and civil rights,
while simultaneously #consolidating #power for itself, corporations, gun owners, Christian conservatives, and state officials who owe their political influence to heavily gerrymandered districts.
All this has been accomplished while the Roberts Court has sought to present itself as a neutral, nonpartisan institution, free from corporate interests and policy preferences and guided solely by constitutional and democratic principles.
As the Roberts Court has transformed into a #conservative policymaking body, it has maintained that it is merely fulfilling its constitutional mandate.
The judicially sanewashed opinions of the Roberts Court haven’t been limited solely to sanewashing the law;
-- Often, they also involve extensive sanewashing of the facts too.
For example, in tandem with whitewashing the anti-racist purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments in Shelby County v. Holder,
the Roberts Court also recast former Confederate states subject to the #Voting #Rights #Act, or VRA, as aggrieved and mistreated, and in need of legal protection by the Court.
According to the sanewashed facts in Shelby County, the VRA was no longer necessary because racially discriminatory voting practices were “rare”
and the remaining sections of the statute would be sufficient to protect minority voting rights.
In the decade since the Court offered those tepid reassurances,
states formerly subject to the VRA’s preclearance requirements have passed an avalanche of discriminatory #voter #suppression laws
as the Roberts Court has simultaneously sought to further weaken the law.
🆘 The Court is now prepared to strike down the remaining vestiges of the statute it promised would remain in place to ensure voting rights remained protected.
Similarly, when sanewashing the First Amendment to recognize new speech rights by corporations to engage in unlimited political spending in #Citizens #United,
the Roberts Court tried to assure a skeptical public that dismantling decades of campaign finance regulations would strengthen the integrity of elections and allow voters to hold officials accountable.
🔥Fifteen years later, the ruling has unleashed a torrent of unregulated corporate spending in American politics,
enabling #superPACs to raise limitless funds from corporations
and undisclosed donors to exercise an outsized influence on election results.
⭐️Between 2010 and 2024, political spending by super PACs grew from $62.6 million to $4.1 billion.
Americans are so disgusted with #darkmoney in politics that an overwhelming majority supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.ERO
https://newrepublic.com/article/204788/supreme-court-judicial-sanewashing-roberts
