Justice John Roberts went against his 40-year record to deliver win for voter rights: report

Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly surprised everyone and went against his own personal mission when he authored a ruling finding that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition on racial gerrymandering by packing most of the state's Black voters into a single congressional district.

The ruling, which was joined by all three liberal members of the court along with a partial agreement from the conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was a surprise to legal observers, who had expected the country's top court to weaken the Voting Rights Act protections and find Alabama's map satisfactory.

That was the expectation in part because of Roberts' "40-year battle to whittle down racial equality protections enshrined in the crowning glory of the civil rights movement," according to a report from The Guardian's Ed Pilkington on Saturday.

"The chief justice’s decision to cling closely to precedent and avoid a sweeping reframing of voting rights law took supreme court observers by surprise," Pilkington wrote. “'Speechless!' was how Robyn Sanders, an elections lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, described her reaction. 'An amazing victory for voting rights, Black voters, and the Voting Rights Act.'"

The report continues:

"The chief justice has demonstrated a consistent desire to dilute or destroy elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in so doing has opened the floodgates to a torrent of voter suppression measures from Republican states that continues today. This time, though, Roberts reined himself in."

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Roberts was able to do so by focusing on the Court's precedent, as opposed to trying to rewrite the law, Pilkington added. And his intentions are reportedly more about the long game.

"A key to understanding Roberts’s intentions is that he plays the long game," the article states. "He likes to present himself as a bridge-builder who represents the moderate center of American jurisprudence. He is also highly sensitive to the slump in public trust in the supreme court that has followed embarrassing revelations about Clarence Thomas’s luxury holidays paid for by a Texan billionaire."