“Today’s conservative judges pride themselves on being textualists… As Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. put it just last year, the courts’ focus must never waver from what a statute’s ‘words were understood to mean at the time of enactment.’ Any other approach, even one that ‘sails under a textualist flag,’ Alito lectured, is ‘like a pirate ship’ — inappropriate and illegitimate​​. So it was a shock to see the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by none other than Alito, stacking one extra-textual constraint after another onto Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act…

“The court’s most astonishing extra-textual move… was its pronouncement that one ‘relevant consideration’ is ‘the degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice’ in 1982, when Section 2 was revised in response to an earlier Supreme Court ruling. Why on earth would that be?…

“The provision never says that. In fact, Section 2’s whole point is to unsettle the status quo, to end voting restrictions that disproportionately harm minority citizens. The provision aspires to move American democracy forward, not keep it fixed forever in 1982… To return to Alito’s metaphor, this is what a judicial pirate ship looks like.”
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Washington Post

“‘The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote,’ Justice Samuel Alito wrote in an opinion joined by the other conservatives. That is a dismissive wave of the hand at precisely the sort of evidence that Congress told voting-rights plaintiffs to present in court…

“As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in a dissent longer than the ruling itself, small numbers can make a big difference. In 2020, for example, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes — fewer than the state threw out based on the out-of-precinct policy in two of the past three presidential elections…

“Since the court is talking about ‘mere facts,’ the conservative justices might have noted the mere fact that voting fraud, which lawmakers in a number of states claim they are trying to prevent with laws like the ones in Arizona, is essentially nonexistent. As one federal judge put it several years ago, such laws are akin to using ‘a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table.’”
Editorial Board, New York Times

Regarding California’s disclosure requirements, “Had the court said only that California’s law as applied to those facing a threat of harassment was unconstitutional, it would have been no big deal. But the majority opinion, by Chief Justice John Roberts, is much more troubling. The court held the disclosure law could not be applied to anyone, even those not facing a risk of harassment. He also rejiggered the First Amendment standards to call many other laws into question.”
Richard L. Hasen, New York Times

“As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in a dissenting opinion, ‘today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye.’ The upshot is that wealthy donors now have far more ability to shape American politics in secret — and that ability is only likely to grow as judges rely on the decision in Americans for Prosperity to strike down other donor disclosure laws.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox

Some note that “Once upon a time, American liberals thought that people should be allowed to donate money to charities anonymously to protect them from retaliation for supporting controversial causes. Now it’s conservatives who want to preserve donor privacy, in keeping with their skepticism of campaign finance laws that require disclosure. On Thursday the Supreme Court sided with 1950s liberals and contemporary conservatives, striking down a California law that required charities to disclose the names of the largest donors…

“Progressives are right to think that campaign-finance laws should require disclosure… Nevertheless, protecting donor anonymity to civil-society institutions should still be something liberals care about. Right-wing trolls are just as capable of harassing donors to progressive causes as left-wing trolls might harass conservative donors. Seen through that lens, today’s decision isn’t the loss for liberals that the 6-3 lineup might suggest.”
Noah Feldman, Bloomberg