Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

The January Sixer Behind the Attack on Voting Rights

In this week’s Elie v. US, our justice correspondent digs into blockbuster revelations about the lead plaintiff in the VRA case. Plus, the enduring Cult of Trump.

A man holds a “Stop the steal” sign as rioters take over the steps of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

An explosive report from Democracy Docket revealed that Bert Callais, the lead plaintiff in Louisiana v. Callais, the case that demolished the Voting Rights Act, was a January 6 protester. It’s unclear if Callais also attacked the Capitol as part of Donald Trump’s failed coup d’état, but it is clear that he’s an election-denying conspiracy theorist.

I can’t say I find this information surprising. That may be because I tend to judge people by the arguments they make in court, not by the color of their skin. Callais took umbrage at being placed in a majority-minority district, in a state that is one-third minority, and made an entire federal case out of it. His core argument was racist: He essentially argued that white people in Louisiana have a constitutional right to be overrepresented in Congress, that they should get more than they deserve. Finding out that a man like this has modern-day Klan robes in his closet is not really “new” information to me, just confirmation of my previous assumptions.

What is, I guess, wild to me is that the lawyers and white-wing forces organizing this attack on the Voting Rights Act knew Callais was a J-6 guy, with a long social-media history of objecting to the voting rights of non-white people, and decided to use him as the poster boy for their case anyway. Just to pull back the curtain a little bit, the “named plaintiff” in a case like this is rarely random. Cases built to get to the Supreme Court do not often start because one average citizen files a humble lawsuit that blows up. These cases are planned. The plaintiffs are picked to put the issue in the best possible light.

Take Plessy v. Ferguson. In that case, the named plaintiff, Homer Plessy, was not just some random brother who decided on his own to challenge segregation on train cars in the South. Plessy was an activist, and he was picked by civil rights organizers… because he looked white. Plessy could pass. To kick Plessy off of a whites-only train car, the conductor had to know he was Black by blood, because you couldn’t tell by just looking at him. Plessy’s phenotype highlighted the issue that segregation was based on blood quantum and nothing else.

The fact that the white folks in Louisiana thought that a January 6 guy was the perfect face for their assault on the Voting Rights Act should tell you all you need to know about the reasons these folks decided to bring the case. Louisiana v. Callais is not about Republicans versus Democrats in the battle for control of Congress. It’s about white folks trying to take political power away from Black folks.

And the Supreme Court ruled “whites win”—again.

In case the Callais decision isn’t enough proof that the government is run on white male grievance, check out........

© The Nation