Fundamental rights shouldn't depend on your ZIP code

One of the most powerful trends in modern politics is the growing separation between red and blue states.

- Ronald Brownstein, Tribune News Service

Now, the Supreme Court looks poised to widen that chasm. Over roughly the past decade, virtually all Republican-controlled states have rolled back rights and liberties across a broad front: banning abortion; restricting voting rights; censoring how teachers can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation; and prohibiting transition care for transgender minors. No Democratic-leaning state has done any of those things. The result is the greatest gulf since the era of Jim Crow state-sponsored segregation between the rights guaranteed in some states and denied in others. The Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority has abetted this separation. Its decisions eviscerating federal oversight of state voting rules (in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case) and rescinding the national right to abortion (in 2022's Dobbs decision) freed red states to lurch right on both fronts. In oral arguments this month, the GOP-appointed justices appeared ready to push the states apart in a new way: by restricting federal courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.