Martha Chambers of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a quadriplegic. A victim of a long-ago horseback riding accident, she has no use of her body from the neck down. She physically can’t deposit her ballot in a mailbox or ballot box; someone has to do that for it.
That’s illegal in Wisconsin, thanks to Republican efforts to make voting as difficult as possible. The Wisconsin Supreme Court, widely viewed as a partisan court despite its officially nonpartisan status, upheld those restrictions (see story here).
But I’m thinking there probably is, or at least should be, a federal civil rights lawsuit here. Which means the state courts wouldn’t have the final say. It seems obvious that Chambers and others like her are being their civil rights and equal protection by Wisconsin’s legislature and courts. Because those rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, that could put the state at odds with federal courts. In such a case, the federal courts have final say.
But I’m not sure we still have a U.S. Supreme Court that respects the constitutional rights of our citizens. The latter court, too, is now seen as a partisan court and one wildly unrepresentative of the majority of Americans.