Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Supreme Court Takes a Nakedly Political Turn

You don’t have to go to law school to understand why five justices allowed Ohio to purge its voter rolls.

June 11, 2018 at 4:22 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

What if I don’t “Ohio” voting?
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

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In a 5-4 decision along party lines, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld an Ohio law that lets the state kick people off the voter rolls if they don’t show up to vote for six years and don’t return a postcard saying they haven’t moved.

It would be nice if legal principle had played any role in the decision on either side, but it didn’t, not really. The five conservatives, including Justice Anthony Kennedy, found in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute that the state law was consistent with federal law; the four liberals said it wasn’t.