{"id":77,"date":"2026-05-22T10:43:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:43:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:43:22","slug":"sam-alitos-math-on-color-blindness-doesnt-check-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"Sam Alito\u2019s Math on \u201cColor-Blindness\u201d Doesn\u2019t Check Out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sign up for\u00a0<\/em>Executive Dysfunction<\/em>, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law\u2014or how the law is pushing back. You\u2019ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate\u2019s Jurisprudence team.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more What\u2019s Going On With FEMA?<\/a><\/p>\n

Less than one lifetime ago, courageous protesters\u2014Black women and men\u2014were brutally attacked on Edmund Pettus Bridge by police officers with tear gas and billy clubs. These protesters sacrificed their own safety to secure something deemed even more sacred: their right to vote. The fruit of that sacrifice was the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.<\/p>\n

Yet on April 29, the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark decision in\u00a0\u00a0dramatically narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act operates. What\u2019s been less discussed than the significant consequences of the ruling is how the majority\u2019s reasoning rests in substantial part on the premise that colorblind rules and practices produce fairer outcomes. That colorblindness promotes justice. But this premise is wrong.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

To understand why, imagine a scenario with no historical discrimination\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0fully colorblind policies. Would colorblindness in this setting, a setting presumably most favorable for just outcomes, be fair? My\u00a0economics research\u00a0published in the peer-reviewed\u00a0Journal of Law and Economics<\/em>\u00a0demonstrates that the answer is a definitive no<\/em>. I demonstrate mathematically that with an otherwise level playing field, when one group is larger, its members systematically enjoy more connections\u2014along with the opportunities that flow through them. This applies predictably to both the protections of affirmative action and voting rights laws that the court in recent years has hollowed out.<\/p>\n

Call the phenomenon itself \u201csocial network discrimination.\u201d It emerges not from malice, but from math.<\/p>\n

Consider a simple example in the employment context with three trusted employees providing referrals for potential job candidates. The employees have equal qualifications, the company does not use race in hiring, and initial hiring is fair. In this hypothetical, one-third of the population is minority, and so one-third of employees are also minorities. Each employee interacts with each of nine prospective job applicants at a professional event, and later makes referrals based on the social connections they form.<\/p>\n

Research shows we are more likely to form connections with people who have similar characteristics and backgrounds to ourselves\u2014a tendency called\u00a0homophily\u2014and that race is its strongest predictor in America. So let\u2019s say homophily is also equal across groups, with a two-thirds chance of forming a social connection if people are in the same majority or minority group, and a one-third chance if they are in different groups.<\/p>\n

The result from this example: On average, each majority employee forms five social connections\u2014four with majority applicants and one with a minority applicant. The one minority employee forms four social connections\u2014two with majority applicants and two with minority applicants. That means four out of 14 total social connections are with minority applicants, which comes out to less than 29 percent and thus a smaller total than actual population of minority applicants.<\/p>\n

There will simply be disproportionately fewer social connections (and job referrals) for minority groups despite both groups starting off at the company on equal footing and the company using fully colorblind hiring policies. Simply by being a smaller share of the population, minorities receive systematically fewer opportunities. Despite colorblind policy, outcomes remain unfair.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0\u2014and it does not stop at hiring. It extends to any domain where informal connections matter. Including politics.<\/p>\n

Read more A Democratic Governor Just Failed Our Democracy in the Worst Possible Way<\/a><\/p>\n

The same mechanism that produces unequal economic opportunity also produces unequal political opportunity\u2014and in politics, the disadvantage compounds across stages. On an otherwise level playing field, minorities are systematically less likely to form the social connections needed to\u00a0run for office. Even if they do, they are still less likely to have built-in networks to\u00a0effectively fundraise. Even if they raise the money, they are still less likely to\u00a0mobilize sufficient votes\u00a0to win. And even if they win election, they are still less likely to\u00a0build coalitions\u2014another network process.<\/p>\n

And this structural channel operates independently of historical discrimination. This means there are two separate reasons race and politics cannot be disentangled, only one of which depends on history. The result is a political system in which colorblind policies and practices reinforce unequal political outcomes. That is what makes support for the\u00a0Callais<\/em>\u00a0decision so problematic. In fundamental ways, the decision builds on faulty logic.<\/p>\n

First, race and politics are deeply intertwined in America\u2014often inseparable. Yet the court demands that future plaintiffs in voting rights cases meet an often impossible standard\u2014namely, disentangling race from politics. Black voters overwhelmingly\u00a0support one party,\u00a0voting is intensely\u00a0, and\u00a0residential segregation maps\u00a0onto district lines. A test that demands what is often impossible is not a test designed to find what is true.<\/p>\n

Second, racial homophily in networks is a mechanism that, in part,\u00a0causes<\/em>\u00a0political disparities. The implications of social network discrimination demonstrate that race is not just correlated with political outcomes\u2014it can structurally generate them. Yet the court has shifted the evidentiary framework sharply toward an inquiry focused on discriminatory intent<\/em>, not outcomes.<\/em> This requires evidence that supports a strong inference of intentional discrimination, rather than the effects-based framework adopted by Congress in 1982.<\/p>\n

Third, by demanding that plaintiffs disentangle race from politics, the court asks them to disprove the very structural reality that social network discrimination reveals. The court is asking plaintiffs to disentangle a\u00a0consequence<\/em>\u00a0of racial structure\u2014the political landscape\u2014from its source. This is like asking someone to prove that a shadow was not cast by the object blocking the light. The court has constructed a test that treats a product of racial inequality\u2014politics\u2014as evidence that racially-motivated intent is not the culprit. The more social network discrimination operates\u2014the more racial network structure shapes political outcomes\u2014the easier it becomes for states to claim that \u201cthis is just partisanship,\u201d and the harder it becomes for plaintiffs to prove otherwise. So the court\u2019s new evidentiary test does not fail by accident but by its design. The partisan landscape the court treats as race-neutral is downstream of racial structure. It mistakes the symptom of racial inequality for an independent phenomenon.<\/p>\n

After Callais<\/em>, when a state divides minority communities and defends the map as partisan, federal courts will not police the partisanship as such. Callais\u00a0<\/em> requires plaintiffs to overcome this partisan explanation with evidence supporting a strong inference of intentional racial discrimination. Yet the worse racial inequality is in a jurisdiction\u2014the more network structure shapes political outcomes\u2014the more partisan the pattern appears, and the more impenetrable the shield becomes. The trap closes. So, in claiming to remove \u201cthe very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids\u201d in redistricting, in truth, the court has eased the way for discrimination by another name.<\/p>\n

This trap is not just theoretical. Already, it is playing out in real time. Within weeks of the\u00a0Callais<\/em>\u00a0decision, Tennessee eliminated its sole majority-minority congressional district. Florida passed a new map the very day the decision was handed down. Alabama moved to reinstate maps previously struck down under the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana suspended its congressional primaries and began redrawing its map, with lawmakers quickly moving toward eliminating one of the state\u2019s two majority-Black districts. Across the South, seismic changes are underfoot. And each state will defend its new maps as \u201cpartisan,\u201d not racial\u2014precisely the shield that the court has now made nearly impenetrable.<\/p>\n

The blood shed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 forged a law of historic success and magnitude in beginning to level the playing field that punished minority voters and candidates while boosting majority ones. So what this court has narrowed is not simply a legal doctrine. Not simply a framework for voting rights. It has narrowed a promise. A promise for what this country strives to stand for. What comes next offers no easy answers. But the math will not change. The only question is whether our laws will reckon with it\u2014or continue to mistake the consequences of racial structure for something else entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court Weighs How Much Google Surveillance Can Be Used Against You in Court<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The math will not change. The only question is whether our laws will reckon with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14,18,11,73,84,29,15,17],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jurisprudence","tag-gerrymandering","tag-judiciary","tag-jurisprudence","tag-opinionpalooza-2026","tag-race","tag-samuel-alito","tag-supreme-court","tag-voting-rights"],"yoast_head":"\nSam Alito\u2019s Math on \u201cColor-Blindness\u201d Doesn\u2019t Check Out - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=77\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sam Alito\u2019s Math on \u201cColor-Blindness\u201d Doesn\u2019t Check Out - Home Move Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The math will not change. 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