“Jim Eagle” Has Landed: A Federal Court Declares Georgia Election Law Entirely Constitutional

by Jonathan Turley:

Below is my column in Fox.com on the recent decision finding the Georgia election law constitutional. That was the law widely denounced by President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders as unconstitutional as a “new Jim Crow” law. The media repeated the claim despite some of us noting that the law fit well within existing precedent and even shared conditions with blue states like Delaware. Now that the challenge has been rejected in its entirety, there is little more than a shrug from some of the same figures and outlets. That includes Major League Baseball, which boycotted Georgia over a law now declared constitutional.
 
Here is the column:
 
“Jim Eagle” has landed… with a thud. President Joe Biden famously (and somewhat bizarrely) used the name “Jim Eagle” to characterize the Georgia election law.
 
It was not enough to call it “Jim Crow on steroids” and “sick,” President Biden wanted the public to know that the law was flagrantly unconstitutional. Some of us disagreed, but the view that counted was that of U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, an Obama appointee who heard the challenge to the law. This week, Jones found the law to be entirely constitutional.
 
After being declared the “new confederacy” and subjected to a costly boycott, Georgians could be forgiven if they view Biden’s claim as more foul and fowl.
 
Given the exhausting media coverage and condemnations of the law, one would expect the legion of legal experts out in force on a judge upholding the allegedly “modern Jim Crow law.”  Instead, it has been crickets . . . almost as if the earlier coverage was knowingly exaggerated for public consumption.
 
Georgia Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams tweeted  “It’s Jim Crow in a suit + tie.” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., called the laws “anti-American, racist, and a betrayal of our Constitution.” Democratic attorney Marc Elias (who allegedly hid the Clinton campaigns funding of the infamous Steele dossier) said in an interview that “democracy was assaulted with a pen” in the new law. Liberal publications like Vanity Fair called it “a broad, profoundly undemocratic assault on voting rights.”
 
Now that such claims were actually subjected to judicial review and rejected, there is little discussion of Jim Crow. The group that lost before the district court is closely associated with Abrams, who previously refused to concede the election of Gov. Brian Kemp in the last election.
 
President Biden once again has moved on. For weeks, Biden denounced the law as taking us back to the segregation period and even the Civil War. Yet, the ruling met with a shrug from the White House.
 
It is a familiar pattern.  The president has often made sweeping legal claims and then refused to address the rejection of those claims.
 
The Georgia ruling actually came on the anniversary of one of the most reprehensible examples. A year ago, President Biden rushed to condemn border agents falsely accused of whipping migrants from horses along the border. Not waiting for charges, let alone an investigation, Biden declared “It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.”
 
The same pattern followed. While some of us noted that there was no evidence to support the claim (and actually the photographer denied the allegation), the media went into the same frenzy. While promising a quick investigation, the Biden administration then slow walked the process and recently cleared the agents of the whipping allegation. They will, of course, still be punished just as the president promised that they would . . . for something.
 
The one thing that they will not receive is an apology from President Biden. The news cycle is over and they are no longer relevant. It is no longer important or worth mentioning that Biden openly misrepresented the law with a series of false statements. In today’s highly protective media, Biden can just move on without contradiction to his next sensational legal claim.
 
There is also silence from those who supported the boycott of Georgia over a law that has now been upheld in its entirety as constitutional. Major League Baseball pulled out of the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and may have cost the state as much as $100 million.
 
The MLB is entirely silent in its decision to punish Georgia before any review of the courts. While some of us disagreed with Abrams and Biden, the MLB simply punished the whole state.
 
Georgia has noted that the alleged “voter suppression” under the law turned out to be a voter enhancement. According to the secretary of state’s office, 1.9 million eligible voters participated in the 2022 primary contest compared to 1.2 million in 2018. Moreover, African-American turnout was 22% higher than any other primary election except for the 2020 presidential primary.

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