The Smithian

The Louisiana Supreme Court resolved a racially tinged power struggle inside its own ranks, ruling Tuesday that Bernette Johnson should be the state’s first black chief justice…A long list of elected officials and civil rights advocates, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, called for Johnson to get the position. The New York Times published two editorials supporting her, one of which called the dispute an “unsettling example of how power can trample voting rights even where they should be sacrosanct.” The court said its ruling was based strictly on the law.

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