In early March, in a 5-4 ruling, the Court limited environmental groups’ ability to file lawsuits. In response to the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a salvage timber sale on 238 acres of the Sequoia National Forest damaged by fire—using regulations that exempt small sales from the process used for more significant decisions—the groups challenged the sale and regulations. A California federal district court and the Ninth Circuit ruled that, although the groups settled the sale case, they could challenge the regulations. In Summers v. Earth Island Institute, Justice Scalia wrote that the groups lacked standing and rejected a test the dissent suggested: that a group has standing if, after accepting its self-description, “there is a statistical probability that some of [its] members are threatened with concrete injury.”
Days later, in a 5-4 ruling, the Court rejected a reading of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that would have institutionalized race as a basis for creating districts. The North Carolina legislation breached the State’s “Whole County Provision” to create a district that ensured the ability of a geographically distinct African American population, with cross-over non-minority voters, to elect Blacks’ candidates of choice. A state trial court held the district was required by the VRA’s Section 2. The State Supreme Court reversed. In Bartlett v. Strickland, Justice Kennedy found “no support for the claim that §2 . . . require[s] the creation of crossover districts” and declared it would be an “irony” if the VRA “entrench[ed] racial differences by expanding a ‘statute meant to hasten the waning of racism in American politics’.”
These are solid rulings, consistent with the law and the Constitution; however, many important rulings of the Court lie ahead, including whether a world-class, award-winning mine in Alaska may begin operation; whether a local government may discard the results of a promotion examination that yield what it regards as an insufficient number of minorities; and whether Congress may continue to control the political processes of selected states when the extra-constitutional basis for exercising that authority ended decades ago.
Whether those cases yield further “good news” remains to be seen.