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On June 8th the SCOTUS ruled that the voting map in Alabama was a violation of the voting rights act....

Supreme Court backs challenge to Alabama congressional map

Justices side with Black voters who contend state violated a section of the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Black voters who challenged Alabama’s congressional map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, meaning the state likely will have to draw a new map with another majority-minority district before the 2024 election.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing the 5-4 majority opinion, upheld lower court rulings that found that Alabama’s congressional map, known as HB1, likely violated the VRA because it only has a single district where Black voters would have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Thursday’s opinion could also spur redistricting in more than just Alabama, which currently is represented by six Republicans and one Democrat. The justices had paused the lower court rulings while they considered the case, allowing Alabama to use its original map for the 2022 election.

The ruling also directly affects the map in Louisiana, where the Supreme Court paused a similar ruling against the state’s map while it dealt with the Alabama cases. Several other states, including Georgia, Texas and South Carolina, are still facing federal litigation challenging their maps under the VRA.

Thursday’s decision, which some Supreme Court watchers called surprising, comes a decade after Roberts wrote the opinion in Shelby County v. Holder that wiped out a key VRA enforcement mechanism.

That ruling tossed the formula the Justice Department used to subject states and localities to preclearance of election law changes and changed redistricting efforts nationwide.
Black Belt

Alabama appealed a judgment from a three-judge panel that its congressional map discriminated against Black voters in part by splitting up the Black population in the state’s Black Belt — named for its soil — among the state’s other six districts.

The panel of three federal judges in Alabama found the state’s map discriminated against Black voters since they are more than 25 percent of the state’s population but can choose their representative in only one of seven districts. The Supreme Court case combined two lawsuits from voters in the state challenging the map.

Roberts, joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal justices, wrote that the lower court correctly applied Supreme Court precedent when finding Alabama should draw a second district where Black voters could elect the candidate of their choice.

“We are content to reject Alabama’s invitation to change existing law,” Roberts said.

Alabama’s solicitor general, Edmund LaCour Jr., said in oral arguments that the lower court, by allowing the challengers to prioritize race when drawing a map that shows a possible additional majority-minority district, effectively mandated the state to violate the Constitution by dividing up voters by race.

The majority of the court explicitly rejected Alabama’s argument for a “race-neutral” evaluation of congressional districts that relies on hundreds of computer-generated maps. Roberts wrote that would make it too difficult to prove a map violated the VRA and go against the law’s goal to prevent racial discrimination in legislative districts.

“Section 2 cannot require courts to judge a contest of computers when there is no reliable way to determine who wins, or even where the finish line is,” Roberts wrote.

Roberts’ opinion also rejected Alabama’s effort to declare that the VRA does not apply to congressional districts, or that it was a violation of the 15th Amendment and unconstitutional.
Dissent

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, and was joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett in parts of it. Thomas criticized the majority for siding against Alabama in a decision he said would effectively mandate proportional representation for minority voters across the country — which he described as a violation of the Constitution.

“The only benchmark that can justify it — and the one that the District Court demonstrably applied — is the decidedly nonneutral benchmark of proportional allocation of political power based on race,” Thomas wrote.

Thomas would have preferred a race-neutral test of mapmaking. “The text of [the VRA] and the logic of vote-dilution claims require a meaningfully race-neutral benchmark, and no race-neutral benchmark can justify the District Court’s finding of vote dilution in these cases,” Thomas wrote.
Other reactions

Challengers to Alabama’s map praised the decision Thursday, including Elias Law Group partner Abha Khanna, who argued the case before the Supreme Court.

“Alabama’s current congressional map systematically dilutes the voting power of Black Alabamians, in clear violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Thankfully, the Court today identified Alabama’s redistricting scheme as a textbook violation of the landmark civil rights law,” Khanna said in a statement.

The Biden administration argued against Alabama in the case, and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the ruling will prevent racial discrimination in voting and “rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections.”

Garland also called on Congress to pass legislation giving the DOJ additional authority to enforce voting rights, though Democratic efforts to do so have stalled over the past decade.

"The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow," Garland's statement said. “Over the past two years, the Justice Department has rededicated its resources to enforcing federal voting rights protections. We will continue to use every authority we have left to defend voting rights.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries praised the decision Thursday in a news conference and said Alabama had engaged in racial gerrymandering.

“And they’re not the only ones throughout the country who have done that, and we can at least draw some comfort from the fact that the 1965 Voting Rights Act remains alive,” the New York Democrat said.

Rep. Terri A. Sewell, the only Democrat in Alabama’s congressional delegation, tweeted that the decision was “Amazing!!”

“Historic victory for the Voting Rights Act, our Democracy and Alabama Black Voters!!!” said Sewell, who is Black.

https://rollcall.com/2023/06/08/supreme-court-backs-challenge-to-alabama-congressional-map/

In regards to Louisiana, today they chose to let a lower courts ruling to stand by lifting a hold on that ruling and letting it stand.......

Supreme Court allows for Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to add another majority-Black district

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to add another majority-Black district.

The justices reversed plans to hear the case themselves and lifted a hold they placed on a lower court’s order for a reworked redistricting regime. There were no noted dissents.

The move from the high court comes after a ruling the justices issued earlier this month about Alabama’s congressional maps that upheld how courts have historically approached the redistricting provisions in the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law that Black voters are using to challenge the Louisiana congressional plan.

“Today’s decision follows on the heels of the court’s 5-4 ruling earlier this month holding that Alabama also has to re-draw its congressional district maps to include a second majority-minority district,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“And like the Alabama ruling, it doesn’t explain why the court nevertheless had issued emergency relief to allow Louisiana to use its unlawful maps during the 2022 midterm cycle,” Vladeck added. “It puts the court’s interventions last year into ever-sharper perspective.”

The new order means that the lower court proceedings in the case, which were put on hold by the conservative majority in late June of last year, will restart. At the time, a merits panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals was preparing for an expedited review of a judge’s ruling that said that the 5-1 congressional plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

The judge, US District Judge Shelly Dick, had been considering a remedial congressional plan, after lawmakers in Louisiana refused to pass a plan with a second majority-Black district themselves.

The justices said Monday that their latest move “will allow the matter to proceed before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for review in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.”

Louisiana state officials were sued last year for a congressional map – passed by the Republican legislature over Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto – that made only one of its six districts majority Black, despite the 2020 census showing that the state’s population is 33% Black.
Order comes after justices froze redrawing of map before midterms

More than a year ago, Dick ordered the map redrawn to add a second Black-majority district to the congressional plan, finding that the map drawn by the Republicans likely violated the Voting Right Act’s prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting.

The judge wrote that “the evidence of Louisiana’s long and ongoing history of voting-related discrimination weighs heavily in favor of” the arguments put forward by the Louisiana State conference of the NAACP and the other challengers that brought the case.

The case, known as Robinson v. Ardoin, then went to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, a very conservative appeals court, and a three-judge appellate panel – which included two circuit judges that were Republican appointees – declined to put Dick’s order on hold. The appeals court expedited a fuller review of the case, but those proceedings were frozen last summer once the Louisiana officials successfully sought intervention from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in late June of last year, took up the case but put it on pause while it decided the challenge to the Alabama map.

In filings after the Alabama ruling was handed down, lawyers for the Louisiana Republican state officials argued that the Louisiana dispute presented a “unique situation” that would allow the high court to resolve legal questions about the Voting Rights Act that they claimed were left open by the Alabama ruling, known as Milligan.

“Today’s decision in Milligan does not address the district court’s significant errors of law that should rightly result in reversal,” the Louisiana filing said.

The state’s opponents countered that the district court in the Louisiana case had decided that the 5-1 map likely violated the Voting Rights Act under the same exact legal test the Supreme Court sanctioned in its Alabama ruling.

“Plaintiffs in both Milligan and Robinson presented the kind of evidence this Court has long required and has now reaffirmed in Milligan as sufficient to prove a (Voting Rights Act Section 2) violation,” the filing from the map’s challengers said.

One of the lawyers challenging the map, Abha Khanna, of the Elias Group, cheered the Supreme Court’s move to send the case back to lower courts.

“By dismissing this case as improvidently granted, the Supreme Court once again affirmed the power of the Voting Rights Act to prevent racially discriminatory redistricting, this time in Louisiana,” Khanna said in a statement. “Black voters in Louisiana have suffered one election under a congressional map that unlawfully dilutes their political influence. Thankfully, Louisiana is now on track to add an additional minority opportunity district in time for 2024, ensuring that Black Louisianians are finally afforded fair representation in the state’s congressional delegation.”

Angelique Freel, civil division director at the Louisiana attorney general’s office, said: “Our job is to defend what the legislature passed, and we trust the 5th Circuit will review the merits in accordance with the law.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/poli...a-congressional-redistricting/index.html

Sooo... Alabama republican's arent allowed to be racist anymore? Sorta ... on one front

SCOTUS Opinion

I've not read this, but wanted to post it for easy access.

A simple explanation of gerrymandering is as follows. Even though Alabama is not 50/50 the same principles apply.

If you have a 50/50 electorate by party and 20 seats, 10 seats would go to each party.

Gerrymandering involves making the seats of one party 55/45 to assure retention of party control.

To do this, seats of the opposing party are "packed" say at 90/10 where voters of the other party are concentrated. The seat is conceded to the opposition. This works well in areas where minorities are located.

This can also be worked in reverse, where are portion of the opposing party is moved (diluted) into a more heavily majority party controlled area to take the real split from 75/25 to say 60/40. Normal maps are drawn using counties and populations.

So when you see a map with districts having multiple split counties or a county with three or more districts, gerrymandering questions begin to arise.

This is the fundamental issue when any party controls the drawing of the legislative maps. Demographics and prior voting patterns allow one party to gain an advantage and take a 50/50 split to 75/25 just by drawing the boundaries in their favor.

So a legislature that works their magic has an inherent advantage. A number of states have boundaries drawn by independent commissions. Ohio is also in a pretty good dispute over the last maps drawn by the republican legislature.

So voters should select their politicians, however this is not always true. Gerrymandering involves politicians selecting their voters. It is a contributing factor to the partisan divide.

Very much so.

I have long thought voting districts should should be as concise as possible while maintaining as even as possible voter quantities per district. There's too much money to be had in office to leave it to the voters to decide who gets to run the bank.

With computer modeling and voter history, gerrymandering can get down to the township or even precinct level. There are really wonky maps showing gerrymandered districts.

Goofy kicking Donald Duck

[img]https://i.insider.com/5a6cd109cf841083018b4f9c?width=800&format=jpeg&auto=webp[/img]

Funny, though I see Wile E Coyote getting kicked.

We have some gerrymandered districts in Ohio.. Just take a look at Jim Jordans district. Part of it used to be a Democratic stronghold with the likes of Mary Rose Oakar and Dennis Kucinich. But after drawing new lines, it takes in part of the bible belt of Ohio and what it causes is a Republican stronghold now..

Republicans recognize they can't win a sausage unless they willingly manipulate the playing field. Watch how quickly Ohio goes blue if we draw up some new lines that are more representitive of the population.

Jul 20, 2022 - Politics
Unconstitutional maps rule Ohio elections in 2022


To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the latest Ohio Supreme Court redistricting ruling is like deja vu all over again.

The court once again ruled a GOP-drawn congressional district map is an unconstitutional gerrymander.
Why it matters: The ruling comes too late to impact this year's election cycle — meaning Ohio voters are stuck with partisan maps benefiting Republican candidates this November.

State of play: This is the seventh time in 2022 the court has rejected state or federal legislative maps as unconstitutionally favoring the Republican Party.

In all seven rulings, Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor joined the court's three Democrats in the majority decision.
The big picture: Despite citizen-driven reform efforts meant to make Ohio's redistricting process more transparent and bipartisan, it has thus far been messy, to say the least.

Republican mapmakers in control of the redistricting commission and state Legislature have repeatedly pushed maps that the court eventually rejects, sending maps back to be redrawn, without consequence.
Rinse and repeat.
What's ahead: Redistricting officials are tasked, once again, with drawing legal maps for the 2024 election cycle.

Reminder: Early voting for the August special election is underway.



https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/07/20/unconstitutional-maps-rule-ohio-elections-2022

j/c:

Marcy Kaptur's district has to be one of the more laughable ones too.

Well, I wasn't going to say it. But, yeah, it is.

they all need to be redone.

this crap will continue forever if non-partisan commissions are not implemented.
this seems like the perfect place to use AI. Give up all the numbers, work the demographics, and produce something that is truly representative of the folks who live in the various areas of the state.


what we have now is clearly not working for everyone.

And in a case that would have allowed states to redistrict without any court oversight has been rejected by the SCOTUS. Not only did state legislatures want the power to redistrict, they wanted the power not to have their decisions to have checks and balances in place to prevent that laws were broken when they did so and to have the right to change federal election laws any way they wished....

Supreme Court rejects independent state legislature theory in major election law case

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a controversial theory that would have given state lawmakers unfettered power to set the rules for federal elections in their states, ruling that the so-called "independent state legislative theory" is inconsistent with the Constitution.

In declining to embrace the idea, which stems from an interpretation of the Constitution's Elections Clause, the court left in place a key check on state lawmakers' actions altering how federal elections in their states are conducted and their drawing of congressional maps.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion for the 6-3 majority in the case known as Moore v. Harper, finding that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review the opinion of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and that the Constitution's Elections Clause does not grant exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.

The decision is a major victory for voting rights advocates, who feared that a ruling adopting the independent legislature theory would wreak havoc on election systems, and allow state legislatures to operate unchecked when setting federal election rules and drawing voting lines.

"The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review," Roberts wrote.

The Elections Clause states: "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof."

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented.

Though the court concluded that the clause "does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law," Roberts noted that state courts "do not have free rein."

"We hold only that state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections," the chief justice wrote.

The "independent state legislature theory" asserts that state legislatures have unfettered authority to set presidential and congressional elections rules without oversight from state courts to ensure they comply with state constitutions. The concept lay largely dormant for more than 15 years, but regained attention after the 2020 presidential election when it was raised by former President Donald Trump's allies as part of efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.

Moore v. Harper arose from the redrawing of North Carolina's congressional map by state Republican legislative leaders after the 2020 Census. The state supreme court invalidated the voting boundaries, finding they were an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

After a state trial court rejected new congressional voting lines drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly, it adopted a map drawn by a group of special masters, to be used only for the 2022 election cycle.

North Carolina Republicans asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that under the Elections Clause, state courts did not have the authority to change rules governing the "times, place and manner" of federal elections. By allowing the court-crafted map to be used, they said, the state's judiciary had decided the "manner" in which North Carolina's congressional elections would be held, usurping the power granted to the state legislature.

Months after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the North Carolina Supreme Court reconsidered part of a 2022 decision that the justices were reviewing. In March, the Supreme Court asked the parties involved — North Carolina GOP legislators, voting rights groups and voters, state election officials and the Biden administration — to submit additional briefs explaining whether it still had the power to decide the case, raising questions of whether the justices would decide the dispute after all.

Then, in late April, the state supreme court's Republican majority overturned the earlier February 2022 ruling that invalidated congressional voting lines drawn by state GOP lawmakers. The ruling from North Carolina's high court effectively gives state lawmakers the green-light to draw its congressional map to favor GOP candidates.

Before the court agreed to take up the appeal from North Carolina Republicans, the three justices that ultimately dissented — Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch — expressed support for the independent state legislature theory. A fourth, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, urged the Supreme Court to consider the issue.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-independent-state-legislature-theory-election-law-case/

They got that one right as well. Note Thomas and Alito appear to be strict constitutionalists.

That all depends on how you look at it. 6 of the 9 justices felt it was unconstitutional to allow state legislatures to change laws without federal court oversight while 3 of them felt it was the other way around.

The constitution is a document that doesn't openly state as much as people would like to infer that it does. It's why even the highest court in the land can't agree on it and why there's a specialty in the legal profession known as constitutional law.

Obama says ‘fringe’ theory rejected by Supreme Court threatened to ‘upend our democracy’

Former President Obama said the Supreme Court’s rejection of the “fringe” independent state legislatures theory Tuesday protects the country from a threat to “upend our democracy.”

The court ruled 6-3 against an effort by North Carolina Republican lawmakers to declare that courts did not have the authority to block congressional maps put forward by state legislatures. The lawmakers argued that the U.S. Constitution gave the authority to regulate federal elections in state legislatures exclusively, so courts could not strike down the map that the North Carolina Legislature approved.

But Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed, writing for the majority that the Constitution’s Elections Clause does not “insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.”

Obama praised the ruling and warned of the consequences if it had gone the other way in a pair of tweets.

“Today, the Supreme Court rejected the fringe independent state legislature theory that threatened to upend our democracy and dismantle our system of checks and balances,” he wrote. “This ruling rejects the far-right theory that threatened to undermine our democracy, and makes clear that courts can continue defending voters’ rights—in North Carolina and in every state.”

The Biden administration opposed the effort to declare that courts had no authority to review the maps, arguing it would “wreak havoc” on administering elections across the country.

Roberts wrote that courts must still review legislatures’ actions within the “ordinary bounds” of judicial review.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority, arguing that the case should have been declared moot.

Republicans retook control of the North Carolina Supreme Court and reversed the court’s decision throwing out the map, raising the possibility that the court could pass on ruling on the merits of the case.

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas’s dissent, and Justice Samuel Alito joined in part.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brie...VpClIXdu_eLa976gcCJjXd-2mtCIvVpoxUjFUWUI

Moore vs Harper (21-1271)

In case anyone wants to read the opinion.

I like strict Constitutionalists. That is the bedrock on which we stand.

That said, too many times redistricting becomes a political matter and needs some judicial final oversight if necessary.

This is an equal problem no matter which party might be in power. It goes both ways.

Districts do need to be reshaped from time to time, but not to the extent of trying to diminish or gain power. Too often it is about keeping their person in power or removing a representative.

No it is not the bedrock.

I have a massive disdain for a strict constitutionalist. You go down a path of trying to figure out what someone in the 1787 meant as if they were biblical figures.

The framers were people, with all of the good and bad.

It is a framework for government that had to be amended 10 times just to get it passed.

The thing was never perfect from the start... see slavery, voting and even the electoral college. That is why we have amendments.

Read 1787 if you have not.

The founders never claimed the constitution was perfect. That is why they left a way to change it. The very idea we have amendments shows that works. It is very much the bedrock of what we do legally in this country. It is the foundation that the Republic is built upon.

We are essentially in agreement.

My disagreement with the strict constitutionalist approach is that if that philosophy were to hold and viewed in the most extreme form, we would not have needed an amendment process. That cannot be reconciled.

Thomas and Alito seem to be following in the footsteps of Scalia, and I never liked or believed in strict constitutionalism. It is a philosophy that is based on a false premise. You can see by their other recent decisions, that they have adopted this philosophy and this shows up in their writings (opinions and dissents) over and over.

For this decision, it is was a dispute created by the parsing of the exact wording of the constitution, not the practical meaning.

But yes, it is the basis for all subsequent laws.

I tend to agree - being a "Strict Constituionalist" - in relation a document/framework known and accepted as needing to be amendeded/not perfect seems like an oxymororn. Yes it's the bedrock of our legal system .... but what it doesn't do is cover "everything" in a fast changing modern society - and trying to interpret laws written for and intended for essentially a differnet world and using them unwaivering to determine today's best course of framework and amendments seems deeply flawed. It was also written at a time when life and politics was dominated by middle aged/old white men - I think that is another issue, no matter how brilliant the individuals may have been and how noble their intentions.

And of course John Eastman isn't happy about it.................

Eastman says Supreme Court decision makes argument ‘murkier’ in 2024

John Eastman, the lawyer who pushed a legal theory in his bid to overturn the 2020 election, said the Supreme Court’s decision in a major elections case will muddy the waters for any legal challenges that emerge from the 2024 election.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to give state legislatures broad authority to draw congressional maps and regulate federal elections, effectively declining to endorse the “independent state legislature” theory pushed by Eastman.

Advocates of the legal theory argue that the Elections and Electors Clauses of the U.S. Constitution give state lawmakers the authority to regulate federal elections without any checks and balances from state courts, governors, or other bodies with legislative power, including constitutional conventions or independent commissions, according to the Brennan Center For Justice.

Eastman said the Supreme Court’s decision will allow courts to weigh in as part of “their normal exercise of judicial review.”

“Chief Justice Roberts says, ‘As long as it doesn’t transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review, such that the court irrigate to themselves the power vested in the state legislators.’

“So what does that mean?” Eastman continued. “Particularly if a state court is interpreting a fairly vague hortatory clause, like we shall have free and fair elections. Can the court just say ‘well that just means we are going to allow for absentee voting if a legislature hasn’t authorized it, because we don’t think it will be free and fair otherwise’?”

Eastman said Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent highlights the problems that this decision is now going to cause.

“This is a litigation bonanza without a clear answer,” Eastman said.

In terms of how the Court’s decision will impact the 2024 election, Eastman said there is going to be lots of litigation.

“We’ve now engaged in what I think is commonly called law fair for these elections,” he said. “There will be lots of lawsuits brought ahead of time to alter election laws, or weaken election laws that the state legislatures put in place to protect against risk of fraud.”

In addition, Eastman said there will be changes made “that appear to have partisan advantages,” saying that is a “huge danger.”

“It is particularly the case when people are lining themselves into different modes of voting,” Eastman said. “If everybody equally distributes themselves between in-person and absentee voting for example, changing the rules doesn’t have an effect on the outcome.

“But if two-thirds of Democrats are voting absentee and two-thirds of Republicans are voting in person, if you loosen the rules on one rather than the other you benefit one of the parties.”

Eastman embraced the theory as part of his argument that former Vice President Mike Pence could have used his power to refuse to certify the 2020 presidential election.

https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...8dcdz8qrmCa5bIjrnDaSHg462uUOU3P1dqS4xbZ0

But then again when over 60 lawsuits were lost by the trump bunch and Kari Lake looking like a fool in her lawsuits, combined with trying to insert fake electors into the 2020 presidential election and trying to make it harder for people to vote, it's easy to understand why he would wish to keep the judicial branch out of things.

I have disdain for people to trample on the Constitution.

You must have a ton of disdain for Bill Barr and Donald Trump and Rudy..... Let's not forget John Eastman.. I mean, thinking that he could use alternate (fake) electors to turn an election? All I can say is, I'm very glad it didn't work.

Including the violent insurrection mob on Jan 6th of the trump brigade?

I have a disdain for Supreme Court justices that offer rulings based on 1780’s medical understanding.

See Alito discussion of Quickening.

And damn, we did not know about bacteria until 100 years later.

My point is that our understanding of the world changes with our knowledge.

Right. And it has changed, many times.

What I don't like it trying to change it with every issue of the times. A building can undergo many changes, but if the foundation is solid, you change within the construct of that foundation. It you start to dismantle that, you have a tear down and rebuild, not a remodel.

Can you explain in what ways you think that applies to how anyone has tried to change the foundation of the constitution?

I think you can figure it out for yourself..

Had I understood the point you were trying to make there I wouldn't have asked you to clarify it.

Continued chipping away at a foundation eventually causes it to crack and break.

Only if the foundation is old and never maintained in the first place.

The foundation is self maintaining. The age doesn't have anything to do with the fact.

It allows for changes, and has been changed over the years. When I say strict, I don't mean never change. I agree as some have said that it is a "living, breathing" document. Amendments have proven that.

I just feel that we still need to use that as a ground level base for all we do, and when changes are made, they need to be made slowly. Too many times the flash point of the times is simply that.

The age and technology have much to do with it. Take the 2nd Amendment for instance. do you really think the founders could conceive of a weapon that could fire off hundreds of rounds in mere seconds? Probably not. Yet, people keep talking about the 2nd amendment and how it protects their right to bare arms.

I think what they couldn't conceive is the total lack of morals and standards that have infested the country.

Now I think we're actually getting to the bottom of it. Just because things were kept more closeted doesn't mean they didn't exist. There's a lot of things they couldn't have conceived from the 1770's until today. People cling to the things they couldn't have conceived that they approve of and attack the things they couldn't have conceived they disapprove of. Morals is a topic which s not a consistent thing. What's moral to some people is immoral to others. And that's a big part of the problem. People wish to impose, legislate and attack things they don't see as moral and force their version of morality on the masses.

Oh come now. Our Forefathers were killing native Americans by the thousands at the same time in the most horrible ways. And it was forbidden to sell firearms to these true Americans. They owned slaves “owned”! And they treated them immorally. They came from Europe where public beheading and burnings were weekend picnics to enjoy.

Couldn’t conceive a total lack of morals. Lol pffft

And as far as technology in weaponry. There has been advances in it since the beginning of our time. So not being able to conceive the future advancement of firearms seems a bit far fetch as well. Maybe that’s why our forefathers made an easy way to change our constitution as they did. Change was good with them. Why not for us?