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Kyle Barry

@kylecbarry.bsky.social

Director, State Law Research Initiative (SLRI) http://state-law-research.org; Formerly @theappeal.bsky.social, NAACP LDF, @afjustice.bsky.social. I write about state courts & dismantling mass incarceration. https://open.substack.com/pub/slri

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Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · 2w ago

NEW: It's not something you see everyday nowadays: A state run by Republicans has expanded voting rights. Missouri adopted a law last week that rolls back felony disenfranchisement, restoring voting rights to tens of thousands of people who are currently on probation and parole. Learn more:

GOP-Run Missouri Becomes Latest State to Roll Back Felony Disenfranchisement - Bolts

A new law will restore voting rights for tens of thousands of people on probation and parole. It’s a departure from other GOP bills this session to restrict democracy.

boltsmag.org

Kyle Barry@kylecbarry.bsky.social · 3w ago

JD Vance appears in this several times, and right after it came out Ross Douthat interviewed Vance at length for the @nytimes.com during which he asked not one question about these highly-detailed allegations or Vance’s and his administration’s direct support of the Tates. bsky.app/profile/anna...

Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 3w ago

If you haven’t read this in full it’s a gutwrenching account of both the sickening serial rape allegations against them and how many friends they have in the Trump administration: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Pacific Antifascist Research Collective@pacantifa.is · 7mo ago

A thread of ICE and CBP sex offenders and credibly accused sex pasts. Content-warning descriptions of abuse Yuma Sector CBP agent Ramon Marquez, 31, was arrested in May 2025 and has been charged with 15 felonies including 14 counts of sexual conduct with a 16-year-old between Dec 2024 and Apr 2025.

Ramon Marquez mug shotRamon Marquez in his CBP Honor Guard uniform
Radley Balko@radleybalko.bsky.social · 3w ago

They aren't claiming the officer feared for his life, but "feared for public safety" when Guerrero attempted to flee. But he was not the target of the warrant. Which means they had no reason to think he was dangerous. Fleeing an immigration stop does not make you a threat to public safety.

DHS breaks hours of silence on deadly ICE shooting in Maine, saying officer was ‘fearing for public safety’ | CNN

The man in the fatal shooting was identified by his neighbor as 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero from Colombia.

cnn.com

🌴Jeff🌴@counseloroh.bsky.social · 3w ago

If NY decides NOT to disbar Todd Blanche, then what good are they? The highest court officer in the country MUST be held to the highest standard or else the entire profession is reduced to a compromised JOKE. America has lost its balls.

Gabrielle A. Perry, MPH@geauxgabrielle.blacksky.app · 4w ago

Now that edits for my upcoming book are almost done, it feels good to come up for air. I did not know this would take 5 years of the hardest work I’ve E done. And between the upcoming book tour and the preorder period, it ain’t over. BAD GIRLS coming soon. 2027. Available everywhere books are sold.

Epidemiologist, political commentator, and founder of The Thurman Perry Foundation Gabrielle A. Perry MPH's BAD GIRLS, an examination of the carceral system as a public health crisis for women that targets and impacts them before, during, and after imprisonment, drawn from research and the author's own experience as an incarcerated woman, to Amina Iro at Legacy Lit, at auction, by Leigh Eisenman at Wolf Literary Services (world).
Leah Litman@leahlitman.bsky.social · last mo.

And Justice Sotomayor goes there in her Al Otro Lado dissent (where SCOTUS allows the Trump admin to nullify asylum guarantees if they stop people at/outside the border): "The current asylum system developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust...."

Bild
David Roberts@volts.wtf · last mo.

I remember when non-binding language suggestions from university HR departments were national news, subject to repeated outraged columns in multiple media outlets. Do you see any of that national outrage about this real, bona fide, state-enforced intimidation & censorship?

Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · last mo.

Two ICE agents tracked down a woman *inside a polling place* yesterday. Why? They demanded that she take down an Instagram post in which she named Jonathan Ross as the man who shot & killed Renee Good (after the Star Tribune identified Ross). www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

Alex Ip 葉清霖@alexip718.com · last mo.

America cannot have a multiracial, multicultural democracy if the United States Supreme Court is allowed to continue to exist in its current form

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · last mo.

Fourth (and *last*) ruling from #SCOTUS is in TPS. For the usual 6-3 majority, Justice Alito holds that federal law forecloses judicial review of statutory challenges to the executive branch's termination of temporary protected status for Haiti, Syria, etc.: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Kyle Barry@kylecbarry.bsky.social · last mo.

This is why CA’s Racial Justice Act is so profoundly important—at least in criminal cases, courts can no longer hide behind “well the government wasn’t OVERTLY racist …” statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana... bsky.app/profile/jame...

California’s Racial Justice Act Goes to Court

The California Supreme Court overturned a death sentence but diluted the law’s protections, two justices said.

statecourtreport.org

Jameel Jaffer@jameeljaffer.bsky.social · last mo.

Compare Alito's description of Trump's racist statements (on the left) to Justice Kagan's anthology of Trump's racist statements (on the right). These are passages from this morning's opinions in Mullin v. Doe.

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · last mo.

Sam Alito: It is the worst kind of discrimination to create majority-minority congressional districts and so we are going to kill the Voting Rights Act. Also Sam Alito: There is nothing we can do if the president cancels legal status because he thinks the United States is a white country.

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · last mo.

Fourth (and *last*) ruling from #SCOTUS is in TPS. For the usual 6-3 majority, Justice Alito holds that federal law forecloses judicial review of statutory challenges to the executive branch's termination of temporary protected status for Haiti, Syria, etc.: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Kyle Barry@kylecbarry.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just so things are clear going forward, the “Purcell principle” means that any branch of state government may impose last minute, illegal election changes that discriminate against Black voters, but no branch of government may redress them, for fear of chaos.

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2mo ago

To prove racial gerrymandering, a plaintiff has to draw race-blind districts that are just as favorable to Republicans. But that's impossible to do because Republicans uniformly select racists as their candidates and Black voters won't vote for racists. So racial gerrymandering is always allowed.

Callais updated these standards. As relevant here, weheld that for plaintiffs to satisfy the first Gingles precondi-tion, a plaintiff ’s alternative map “must meet all the State’slegitimate districting objectives” “just as well” as the State’sown map. 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 29) (emphasisadded). Those legitimate districting objectives, we held, in-clude “the State’s specified political goals” and “any othergoal not prohibited by the Constitution.” Ibid. A plaintiffalso “cannot use race as a districting criterion” in preparingthe alternative map.
Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BREAKING: In an unsigned, per curiam opinion on the shadow docket, the SCOTUS conservatives allow Alabama to use a congressional map held repeatedly by a lower court to have been enacted with discriminatory intent.

At this preliminary stage, the State has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the District Court's injunc-tion. See Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citi-zens, 607 U. S. 一 (2025) (slip op., at 1-2). The State is likely to succeed on the merits as to both claims. As to intentional vote dilution, the District Court did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith, see Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 10 (2024), because it interpreted the State's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus. Cf. Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579, 608-609 (2018). And, as to both claims, the District Court's analysis departed from Callais. Under Callais, the District Court was required to deny relief unless the plaintiffs' alternative map performed "just as well" with respect to all of the State's constitutionally permissible districting crite-ria. 608 U. S., at— (slip op., at 29). Yet, the District Court found a violation even though the plaintiffs' alternative map would not perform just as well as to the State's constitutionally permissible criteria of keeping together the Gulf Coast community of interest and avoiding the pairing of in-cumbents. The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns. See id., at _ (slip op., at 30).