Bloomberg LawFormer federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner at McCarter & English, discusses the turmoil over the Justice Department's attempt to dismiss the corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Bloomberg Supreme Court Reporter Greg Stohr, discusses the tests ahead for the Supreme Court with Trump as president. Alex Ebert, Bloomberg Law Senior Correspondent, and Diana Dombrowski, Bloomberg Law Investigative Reporter, discuss the findings of a study on the impact of the Supreme Court's decision in the Bronovich case on voting rights cases. June Grasso hosts.
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio. The saga of the Justice Department's attempt to dismiss the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams continued in Manhattan courtroom today. Federal Judge Dale Hoe heard arguments from adams lawyer and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, whose order to the Manhattan US Attorney to drop the charges against Adams led to the stunning resignation of that US attorney and seven other career prosecutors joining me as former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz a partner maccarter in English, Bob, it was an atypical scene in the courtroom. On one side, you had the Justice Department, represented by the acting Deputy Attorney General, and on the other you had Adams and his lawyers. Nowhere was there a representative from the Manhattan US Attorney's office that brought the case.
In terms of a courtroom proceeding, it was quite unusual because you didn't have any of the prosecutors who actually worked on the case, who worked on the investigation over the past two or three years before the judge. Instead, you had this situation where Embo Beauveay, the acting Deputy Attorney General, was really the loan Justice Department official defending the actions of the Justice Department, and it created really quite a remarkable situation.
The judge questioned Adams to find out whether he understood that the charges could be brought against him again, and Adams said, I have not committed a crime. I do not see them bringing it back. I'm not afraid of that.
Well, the Justice Department was requesting what's called the dismissal without prejudice, which means that the government has the ability to refile these charges at any point in the future, subject to the statute of limitation, if they desire to do so. So what the judge here was making sure was that the defendant, Mayor Adams, understood that this dismissal could be reinstated at some point in the future, and the mayor's response was that he did not fear that at all, because he had done nothing wrong.
One of the concerns of the Manhattan US attorney who resigned is that this was a quid pro quo Adam's help on immigration enforcement in exchange for the Justice Department dropping the case, and the judge asked Bouve if there were other examples where a similar rationale was used to drop charges against a public official. Bouvet couldn't come up with a case like that, but he cited the Biden administration's decision to release Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in exchange for US basketball player Britney Griner. But that's clearly a quid pro quo.
Well, I think what he was trying to show was that there are some times where the government will take a position in which they will exchange one thing for another. In prisoner exchanges, you do have a circumstance where somebody who's being held by the United States government, who obviously was duly tried and convicted before a jury, and another US citizen, usually who's held by another foreign country, usually in the situation in which they were deprived of all due process, they are exchanged. But there's really no parallel there, because nobody is saying that is anything but a quid pro quo in exchange for one prisoner for another. For various policy reasons, it does not go to the dismissal of a pending criminal charge, which is something that is entirely different. Those are circumstances where each of those individuals have already been tried and convicted, whether it's in this country or somewhere else, and are now simply getting exchanged for purely political reasons.
It seemed as if Beauvay was sort of outlining what the judge could and could not consider. For example, he said that the judge couldn't do a wide ranging inquiry into DOJ decision making in the case. He said, the inquiry is limited to whether the department made the request in good faith. That's the end of the inquiry. Beauve said, I'm telling you as an officer of the court that that was made in good faith. I mean, did the judge have to accept that?
Well, what the Deputy Attorney General was trying to do was to take away all of this controversy, the unprecedented scene of one prosecutor after another resigning rather than follow in order that they believed was improper, and to take that issue completely off the table and present to the judge what he said was simply a straightforward exercise in prosecutorial discretion. And to really try to make this sound as if this is a routine dismissal of a criminal that is, in the words of mister Bob, virtually unreviewable by this courtroom. What he was trying to do with the signal to the judge that the judge here really does not have much discretion at all, and that if the government is moving to dismiss this case, the court really should simply acquiesce and sign the order.
What continues to surprise me is that Beauvet's argument for dismissing the charges is the same argument he made in his first order to the Manhattan US Attorney and that caused a string of prosecutors to resign. He said, the continuation of this prosecution is interfering with both national security and immigration initiatives. I think the fact that Mayor Adams is sitting to my left is part of the problem. He's not able to be outrunning the city. So again, there's no consideration of the evidence against Adams. So the Justice Department is dismissing a case based on political consideration and it's admitting that.
Yeah. Well, what this really does is it raises the question as to what limits, if any, there are in terms of prosecutorial discretion. Hear, what the Deputy Attorney General is really arguing that if the Department of Justice wants to dismiss the case, they can pretty much do it for any reason whatsoever. And in this case, the argument is that the continued prosecution of Mayor Adams will interfere with President Trump's ability to pursue his immigration agenda. And the real question then is is that an appropriate basis to dismiss the case? And what the government's position now is that the judge does not get to question whether or not the basis for the dismissal is appropriate or not, simply if it is made in good faith, that that's enough. Now, what we've seen here too is mister Beauveat kind of trying to have it both ways, in the sense that initially he said that the decision to dismiss this case would not based at all on the case's legal merits or the theory of prosecution, and he stuck to that again during this hearing, But then he also told the judge that the prosecution had the appearances of impropriety and the suggestion that this entire case was brought simply to punish the mayor for his stance on immigration, which was contrary to the position of the Biden administration at the time. So he really is challenging in some way the merits of the case and suggesting that this case was improvidently brought by the US Attorney's office. The problem with that argument is that the investigation began well before Mayor Adams became mayor, and well before he criticized the Biden administration's position on immigration. So the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who refused to carry out this order and who has since resigned in protests, pointed out that that argument really didn't hold any water, and that this investigation was never about Mayor Adam's position with regard to immigration and the fact that he challenged the Biden administration on some of the immigration policies.
And both Ay also said at one point that even if there were a quid pro quo, there wouldn't be any issue with this motion.
Once again, the position of the Deputy US Attorney General here is that the government can come in to dismiss the case pretty much for any reason whatsoever, as long as they are quote unquote acting in good faith. And here the position that was put forward to the judge was that if the decision is made by the Department of Justice, that this decision furthers a policy agenda by the administration, that that is a valid basis to dismiss the case. And what troubled the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and other federal prosecutors he resigned in protests is that really is saying to somebody that if you're in a position as an elected official to further the political agenda of the administration, that then your value as a public official and your ability to carry out the administrations again to outweighs the fact that you may have committed a crime and that the case should be dropped for that reason.
So Judge Host said he was aware that he had little discretion and that courts have found prosecutors are the best judges of whether or not a case should continue, but he said judges do have a limited role to play. There was a request from emotion from common cause for the judge to appoint a special prosecutor, and something like that was done in the Michael Flynn case. Couldn't the judge do that?
Well, judge could do that here. The judge is very measured, very methodical in the way he approached this hearing. He started out by calling it an unusual situation, which is a rather understated way to describe the situation that was before him that led to this hearing. He also said that he acknowledged, as you point out, that he he has limited discretion here, but that he is entitled to have a hearing and to understand the government's position for dismissing the case and to determine whether or not dismissal is in the public interest. The judge can, as you mentioned, appoint a special prosecutor if it finds that the Justice Department acted improperly, and he can order that evidence that was gathered by the Department of Justice, for example, be made available to state and local prosecutors so they could pursue the case if the Department of Justice refused.
To do so.
But that would be a really unusual move by the judge, and based upon the way this hearing went, I don't think he's likely to do that.
Judge Hoe ended the hearing by saying he wouldn't shoot from the hip and rule immediately, but he was aware that it's not in anyone's interest here for this to drag on. Of course, even After this motion to dismiss is settled, there are still continuing questions about Eric Adams's future as the mayor of New York City. Governor Kathy Hochel held a series of meetings with key political figures Tuesday as she contemplates removing Mayor Adams from his office. It would be an unprecedented step in New York history. Thanks so much, Bob. That's Robert Mintz of Macarter and English. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show. Trump is forcing the Supreme Court to face its greatest fear. I'll talk to Bloomberg Supreme Court reporter Greg Store. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. Unlike the executive and legislative branches of government, the Supreme Court has no real power to enforce its decisions, no army or constitutional spending power to use. So what happens if the President of the United States refuses to comply with a Supreme Court order? It hasn't happened since the Civil War, but Donald Trump seems to be ignoring longstandingly legal constraints. Is the next step. Defying a court order. Though Trump has said he always follows court orders. His truth. Social posts and statements from his key aids seem to suggest defiance. My guest, his Bloomberg Supreme Court reporter Greg Storr. His recent essay is entitled Trump forces the Supreme Court to face its greatest fear. You know, you wrote this article and it's very scholarly, Greg, and it reminds me of being in law school in a good way. And you start with the history of the landmark case known to every lawyer, Marbury versus Madison.
Yeah, this is probably the most important case in the history of the country, written by Chief Justice John Marshall. As you said, it established that the Court has the power to strike down acts of Congress. But what's notable for our purposes here is is how Marshall got to that conclusion. The case is about when John Adams the presidency after losing reelection. He on his way out the door in eighteen oh one, appointed a bunch of judges known as Midnight Judges, and kind of in the frenzy of doing that with one of them, a guy by the name of William Marbury, the vital step of paperwork didn't happen. The commission didn't get delivered to Marbury, before Adam's left office. Then Jefferson comes into office and his Secretary of State James Madison, refuses to deliver the paperwork, even though that's a pretty routine step. So Marbury goes to the Supreme Court and says, hey, order Madison to turn over that commission. He's violating the law by not doing that. And so John Marshall has this dilemma here. Supreme Court's new hasn't really established itself. The question is is he going to or is the Supreme Court going to order Madison in the Jefferson administration to turn over that commission to Marbury. And the continuous solution that he came.
Up with was, Hey, we don't want to.
Risk the possibility that Jefferson and Madison won't comply, so instead we're going to say, yes, Marbury is entitled to the commission. But as it turns out, we don't actually have jurisdiction to decide this case because this law that Congress passed giving us jurisdiction is actually unconstitutional. So Marbury ducked the confrontation with Jefferson while establishing that the Court is this very powerful institution.
Marshall's fear that a President wouldn't comply with the Court's order. Came to fruition during Andrew Jackson's administration. Jackson, who, by the way, is one of Trump's heroes.
So this is in the context of efforts to move the Jerkey Indians off their land in Georgia. And there was a case that didn't actually involve the Jackson administration. It was between the State of Georgia and a private white man named Worcester, and the Supreme Court said that the State of Georgia was illegally forcing Worcester to take an oath of allegiance to the state. Worcester's a white missionary who lived on Cherokee land, and Georgia law that required every taken oath. Georgia arrested him and refused to release him after the Supreme Court ruling, and then Andrew Jackson, you know, it was not actually a party to the case, but had definite interest in it, essentially refused to help the Supreme Court enforce the ruling and refused to use federal troops to help ensure that that Worcester was released. Jackson's quote, which is probably apocryphal, was John Marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it.
And President Lincoln also clashed with a Supreme Court justice during the Civil War. He actually went further than Jackson. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
Yeah, this is probably the closest as president has ever come to directly defining the Supreme Court. This is a situation where the war had started. The war was precipitated in part by the Supreme Court in Chief Justice Roger brook Tawny issuing the dread Scott decision that declared that freed slaves could never be be citizens in the United States. And as the war starts, Abraham Lincoln's very concerned about sabotage, and he issues an order that authorized one of his generals to suspend the rid of habeas corpus near railroad lines in Maryland and hapeas corpus is this notion that if the government holds you, rescue you can go to a judge and make the governments defend why it's holding you. And Lincoln said, we're going to suspend that notion because of the crisis we face here. Well, the guy named John Merriman was arrested, turned to Roger brook Tawny got a rid of habeas corpus anyway, which demanded that the military justified why Merriman had been been picked up, and Lincoln in his generals essentially ignored the order. Merriman did not go before a judge, and Roger brook Tawney eventually said, look, I've done all I can do here, But he said, my power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome. And Lincoln later justified what he did, saying, are all the laws but one to go on executed, and the government itself to go to pieces lest that one be violated. In other words, he said he was justified by the exigencies of the circumstance, namely of the Civil War.
Since Lincoln, presidents have complied with Supreme Court orders, and Richard Nixon turning over the secret White House recordings in nineteen seventy two is the most recent incident and probably one that people remember most but tell us about some of the other presidents who chose not to defy a court order.
So there's a litany of examples. A few of the biggest ones just because of how high profile they came, as were nineteen fifty two President Harry Truman seizes the nation's steel mills to make sure there's not a work stoppage during the Korean War. Supreme Court rules against them, says he did that illegally. Truman immediately complies. In nineteen fifty four the Brown Versus Board of Education decision and some subsequent rulings, President Dwight Eisenhower initially reluctant to get involved, but actually helped the Supreme Court enforce those rulings and the lower courts enforce those rulings when he sent federal troops to escort black students into a high school in Arkansas. And then nineteen seventy four, Supreme Court orders Richard Nixon to turnover secret White House recordings. Nixon complies days later he has to resign the presidency.
So you asked this question in your piece, and so now I'm going to ask you for the answer. Why are presidents so quick to accept Supreme Court rulings as binding?
Well, there are both specific answers to each instance and kind of a general answer. And the specific answer is often a lot of the time the president is taking a very unpopular position. Harry Truman's position, for example, very unpopular at the time, and his standing was especially low. But there's also the more general issue, which is that the Court over the years, over the decades and centuries, has earned some trust with the public. It has institutional standing that, at least until recently, was pretty strong and very often stronger than the other branches of government. And that goodwill has essentially created what some call it, the habit of accepting the Supreme Court decisions even when folks disagree with them.
And so now we're at a time where the Supreme Court and courts in general are not held in as high regard by the public. I mean, the standing of the Supreme Court is it at its lowest since it's been recorded.
It's not quite at it flowest. Now it has recovered somewhat, but it did. It did hit bottom just a couple of years ago after the Dobbs really have overturned the test too, so right to abortion.
And so President Trump has said that he'll obey court orders. I always obey court orders, he said in the Oval Office when asked. But he also has said some things that leave a question mark in the air. For example, on social media on Saturday, he posted a quote that's been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. He who saves his country does not violate any law. So is there a question still of whether he's going to be different than he was in his first administration?
Absolutely, there's a question. The administration is clearly sending out mixed signals about its intentions.
Here.
You talked about some of the things President Trump has said. There are also things that some of his top aides have said, like Vice President Jade Vance, who actually quoted that apocryphal Andrew Jackson comment about the Chief Justices made is really now let him enforce it. Elon Musk has said things that have strongly suggested he would be willing to defy the Supreme Court. So that concern is in the air in a way it has not been in my lifetime. Even in those moments of huge national crisis, major Supreme Court decisions like the next one Takes case, there wasn't this level of concern that a president might just bumb his nose at the Supreme Court.
And he has issued a lot of executive orders that either ignore the law or defy the law. And you know one that stands out not only the funding freeze, but the birthright Citizenship order, which every judge that's ruled on has blocked it. So is it almost a deliberate defying of the legal norms.
So let me separate two things. With right citizenship, what we have seen this administration do is start off by just ignoring what has been the longstanding understanding of the fourteenth Amendment and acting as though birthright citizenship is not guaranteed. But once quote orders have come through, they are complying with them. But in other contexts the administration has, for example, with an order to unfreeze federal funding, the administration has been a little less quick to comply, and in one case is promptly a judge to issue a follow up order saying, hey, I really expect you to unfreeze that funding. So this is planning out in a lot of different cases. And we haven't yet got to that point where I would say we're at, say, a constitutional crisis, but there are at least hints that we could have a big issue down the road.
And you bring this out, which I thought was really interesting. Trump's control of the Republican Party, and we've seen that Congress is not intervening even when Trump does things that take away some of their power. He has such tight control over the Republican Party, so the Court can't count on Congress to support it.
Right now, some members of Congress have suggested that the Supreme Court should be obeyed. Josh Hawley is Senator jesshal Ad Missouri is when it comes to mind. But we have seen time and again how Republicans in Congress ultimately have given in to what this president wants, and we end up in a world where it is the Supreme Court against both the President and Congress. You know, that's a tough fight for the Supreme Court. You look back in history at the big moments. Richard Nixon resigned in big part because members of his own party went to him and said, mister President, you can't continue. You don't have the support. There have been people who are more concerned about the institutional interests of the government and the continuing functioning of our democratic system rather than loyalty to a person or a party. And given this political climate, it's fair to wonder, is this going to be the Supreme Court standing by itself against both the President and the majority of Congress.
Craig I have to say I find some irony here in the fact that it seems like the Supreme Court has made its own bed with that ruling in Trump the United States last term, granting immunity to the president for official acts. I mean that ruling was stunning, and now they're facing a president who may or may not listen to their orders. But administration lawyers are now quoting that opinion to demonstrate their points about presidential authority.
Yes, there's a case that the in fact, the Trump administration's first case at the Supreme Court in this new term, asking the court to let him immediately fire the head of a whistleblower agency. That brief was chock full of citations to Trump versus the United States. The case you talk about, the immunity case basically saying that the president has broad authority, complete authority over the executive branch of government. And what they're arguing in this case involving the whistleblower agency and what they're arguing in other contexts is the Supreme Court has said that the president is the head of the executive branch and can fire people when he deems it to be in the country's best interest. And that ruling has put a fair amount of wind behind Trump's sales and.
Making that argument maybe the Chief Justice, did you have a few regrets tell us about his annual remarks.
So every year John Roberts put out a report on the state of the federal judiciary at the end of the year, comes out December thirty first, and this year he decided to talk about judicial independence, which is a subject that is near and dear to his heart. He talked about the safety of judges and threats against judges, and he talked about this issue that you and I have been talking about, the prospect that court rulings would be defined. He didn't explicitly mention Donald Trump. He didn't just talk about the president, but he talked about the situations in the fifties and sixties when a lot of state officials were refusing to abide by Brown versus Board of Education. And he talked about the Kennedy and the Eisenhower administrations backing up the court and helping to enforce those rulings. And also talked about the federal judges who, in some cases, at risk of their safety, stood by those rulings and enforce the law. And he said these suggestions, called them dangerous, suggestions that federal court rules could be defied, must be quotes soundly rejected.
So it's barely a month into the administration and they're bringing a case before the Supreme Court. Tell us about it.
Yes, this is a guy named Hampton Dellinger who's the head of a federal whistleblower agency that's called the US Office of Special Counsel. Footnote it's different from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was the one who was prosecuting Trump during the Biden presidency. And Donald Trump is trying to fire him and put his own person in place there. And the legal issue, the underlying legal issue is sort of similar to the case the Court had a couple of years ago when the question was whether the president could fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Supreme Court say yes, notwithstanding the job protections Congress gave that person, and the Special Council also has job protection in the law. And the White House says, we want to fire him anyway. So the question for the Court with at the court right now is a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order for fourteen days saying he can't be fired. While I give this case a little deeper consideration, and the normally a temporary restraining order like that can't be appealed. But the Trump administration first asked the Federal appeals Court and now is asking the Supreme Court to consider that appeal anyway and to set aside the temporary restraining order so that Hampton Dellinger can be fired right away. Basically, they're saying, you know, yeah, we know this normal rule that you can't appeal a RO, but when we're talking about an infringement on core presidential powers, that should be an exception to that general rule about not appealing to ros.
So.
I think Trump is really testing how accommodating the Court's going to be to his efforts to remake the federal government house people who don't share his views. It will be the minimum. A very interesting and potentially a telling signal about just how accommodating this Supreme Court is going to be in the new Trump administration.
And we'll talk to you about it as soon as that's decided. Thanks so much, Greg. That's Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter Greg Store turning out of other legal news after the Supreme Court weekend, a key piece of the Voting Rights Act. Voting discrimination cases are not just harder to bring to court, but dramatically so. That's according to a Bloomberg Law analysis, and experts who examine the findings. Joining me to talk about their analysis is Alex Ebert, Bloomberg Law Senior Correspondent and Diana Dombrowski, Bloomberg Law Investigative reporter. So, Alex, why don't you start by explaining the ruling in the Bernovich case?
Sure, Jean, So, both progressive and conservative litigators say this was a real sea change because what it did was it created a new test for how courts will interpret challenges, especially to state voting laws, and these are the laws that handle the time, place, and manner for when people can cast their votes. What it does is it creates new standards that really raise the bar for these kind of suits. These kind of suits have to have bigger sort of disparities between minority voting groups and white voting groups. They have to be different but still similar to what you see in the nineteen eighties when the law was updated, and they really make it a lot harder for groups to bring challenges against things that are now common practice throughout the United States. That includes things like dropboxes, early voting, having someone help you carry in your ballot if you have a disability. Things that we are now used to seeing across the United States to help people vote, those things are now much harder to challenge underneath this Burndage standard.
So, Diana, this was a long term project from the investigations team. Tell us what your research found.
Sure, So we were trying to measure the impact of this particular decision on Section two of the Voting Rights Act. So our biggest finding we looked at five hundred and seventy nine federal voting rights complaints, and our biggest finding was that there was a sixty percent drop off in cases relying on Section two of the Voting Rights Act after the Bernovich decision. In terms of what the cases were actually about, we saw cases related to immigrations, the cases that mentioned the phrases like illegal immigrants or non English voting materials or proof of citizenship. Those increased by almost one hundred and ten percent. We also saw a big increase in suburging of voter rolls cases about that over one hundred percent. Voter registration laws cases challenging those those increased by almost seventy percent. We also saw complaints related to voting not on election base, so these would be about like mail in ballots, early in person voting, and ballot dropox voting. Those all decreased by almost twenty two percent, and cases related to disability related voting concerns decreased by twenty six percent. I think the drop off itself, like, that's our biggest finding. And the attorneys we talked to were surprised by how big the drop off was. This is sixty percent drop off, and you know, it was the whole point of the decision. You know, it was supposed to be harder to bring Section two cases, but I mean the number itself was surprising to many of the sources that we spoke with.
Alex, is it that these cases aren't being brought or is it that they're being brought in different ways not under Section two?
Both of those things are true. Jan So we have two major trends that experts have told us are really exhibited in this data. One is that litigators are searching for some way to bring these kinds of lawsuits they brought in the past. Oftentimes these cases just aren't getting brought. But they're also having to rely much more on the politically turbulent state courts, where as you know we've talked about in the past, elections can really determine how these courts approach voting rights, and so now all of a sudden you see groups having to rely on novel theories under state constitutions or newly passed voting laws in liberal states in efforts to bolster the rights of minority voters, and.
Where what areas are voters' rights being impinged upon?
Most so, the instances we're seeing are where litigation groups aren't really able to grab some purchase in the state courts. You know, we're being told that, especially in the South, where we no longer have this federal court access to bring in these Section two claims, litigants aren't really having success in Republican controlled states where the state constitutions might have strong rights to vote. While most states have these really strong rights to vote inside of their state constitutions, those things are up to interpretation, and so courts, especially in the South, Republican holed states that really can help determine the control of Congress, they're seeing not as much success there as they might see in state courts like New York or California, where states have literally passed a Voting Rights Act law after Bernovich in order to bolster the rights of litigants Diana.
There are some people who think that this ruling refocused and sort of reined in Section two as it needed to be reined in.
Correct.
There's sort of two sides to this. One is that this is like a huge this took away from one of the most important civil rights laws. And then the other side of this is saying, this is going back to what Section two was initially intended for. It was too sweeping, it was too broad, and this is actually what it was originally intended for.
I thought it was interesting, Alex that lawyers are hesitant to file cases because they were afraid data bad ruling on the books, and they were even afraid to appeal for that reason they are.
Indeed, we've covered litigation in recent years where there will be a massive loss for voting rights groups. A good example is there's an entire circuit in this country where you can't bring a Section two case in many instances, but they didn't want to appeal that to the US Supreme Court because they were afraid of getting a ruling against them and making that apply across the United States. That's just a microchasm, a microcosm of this broader issue we have, which is really a fight at its core between the concepts of equality to the ballot right and equality outcome at the ballot. And liberal groups are saying we need to be able to use modern statistics and the courts to fight for you know, equal access for mail in voting or early voting, and others are saying we need to allow states to manage elections and not have to bog down things when they innovate and make things better.
Professor Justin Levitt of Loyal Law School said it's like a hammer and a screwdrivers. Yeah.
Basically, he was saying that Section two was the best tool for the job, like this was the most direct path to argue these cases, and without it, you can try to rely on other laws, but they're just not as good. You know. We found like the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act both increase and maybe some of that captured that attorneys are relying on those laws, but they also weren't designed specifically for this, so they'll also be used for other things you could use like the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendment. Bernovich didn't impact those, but again, they're like not the most direct way to address it. And we even saw a decrease in the fourteenth Amendment after Burnabitt. The fifteenth Amendment increased about thirty six percent.
Many sources are worried about creating a patchwork across the United States, which really causes a strange battlefield for these rules. You'll have states like Wisconsin or North Carolina where a flip of the state Supreme Court, which happens fairly frequently, could change really important voting laws. You have other states where there's just not as much access to the poles usum states where you have immense amounts of early voting, but you might not have other things, and without sort of the federal clearinghouse for what does and doesn't violate the rights of minority groups. They're concerned among people that we're missing out on the ability of federal courts to stabilize elections in certain ways. And this also increases the attacks that we might see on those state judges that now have that responsibility placed on their shoulder, and they might be seeing additional threats, which is something that sources have said they're noticing in time post Burnovich, what.
Is left of the Voting Rights Act Diana after this decision and after Shelby County.
So I mean it still applies to redistricting cases. Burnevich did not affect how it's used to argue redistricting cases, So we actually took those out of our analysis. Everything we're talking about is non redistricting cases, so it's still going to be used in that context.
Yeah, I think that the conservatives that we reached out to for their insights correctly point out that if the disparity between the racial minority voting group and the white voting group for a certain rule, let's say, state eliminate souls to the polls, an early voting dance Sunday, or black congregations might encourage folks to go vote. That might be an instance where because there's such a disparity, you could still bring a Section two case, But it's going to have to be really really strong to bring one of these time, place and manner cases, and getting that sort of information is expensive and time consuming for these litigation groups. So you're seeing a plummet in these federal cases.
Thank you both for being on this show. That's Alex Ebert Bloomberg Law Senior Correspondent, and Diana Dombrowski, Bloomberg Law Investigative Reporter. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Slash Law, And remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg mhm
