The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority is all about states’ rights and stripping the federal government of power.
Its most high-profile decision, Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade, said it’s up to states to regulate abortion. But conservative justices are also going after federal regulations, dropping hints it’s up to states to run elections as they please, and limiting federal authority in other ways.
Even before Trump’s appointees joined the court, it struck down major portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as undue federal interference with states, foreshadowing other things to come under conservative judicial rule.
This, of course, weakens the “United” part of “States”; and lurking in the background is a specter of the “United States” becoming disunited and perhaps unglued.
Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican chiefly famous for his clenched-fist salute in support of Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, 2021 (photo, left), thinks that’s a good thing. He expects Dobbs to further polarize America, and believes that will help Republicans in the electoral college.
His party has lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections, and depends on the inflated voting power of small-population states in the Electoral College to elect presidents of its party.
Hawley told reporters a patchwork of abortion laws might result in a “sorting” of population by encouraging blue voters to move out of red states, and believes that would work to the GOP’s advantage (see story here).
It doesn’t take much imagination to see this as reminiscent of the pre-Civil War divisions between “slave” and “free” states. That divide ultimately led to rupture of the Union, triggered in part by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (details here). Fast forward to today, and you have some Republicans openly talking about “civil war,” stockpiling guns, and forming armed private militias.
A strong federal government helps hold the “United” States together and resist the centrifugal forces threatening to tear our country apart. But things probably won’t play out the way Hawley envisions, because it’s just too hard for people to relocate. Jobs, family and community ties, and the high or unaffordable cost of relocating keeps them where they are, regardless of local politics.
But what’s likely to matter most, and exacerbate political tensions, is not what happens at the grassroots, but rather conflicts between the legislatures and executive governments of the various states. For example, if states try to enforce their abortion laws beyond their own borders — another echo of the buildup to the Civil War, when slave states sought to compel free states to return runaway slaves.
Conservatives see short-term political advantage in shifting power from the federal government to the states, and now they have a Supreme Court majority on their side. But they might want to consider how the Confederate States’ weak central government contributed to its defeat and demise. Weaken the bonds of union enough, and you no longer have a union.
And that’s highly dangerous, because Americans live in an increasingly hostile world, and this isn’t a good time to be breaking up into 50 little principalities only loosely held together by a powerless central government. In other words, this isn’t a good time to run a third experiment in confederated government. (The first one, if you forgot, was the Articles of Confederation that preceded the Constitution.) Russia and China would have us for lunch.
American society has always been pluralistic, and this country is big enough to accommodate all of us. We are strong united and weak disunited. The conservative justices might want to reconsider that before they go much farther in dismantling our federal government.
See article here.
Related story: The states’ rights undertow on the court is so strong that 4 justices just voted to allow states to violate a federal law protecting the re-employment rights of members of the military. See story here.