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October
12, 2022
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Dear Chief Justice Roberts, I write you as a fellow American and fellow human being
concerned about voting rights. Your Court, having endangered American
democracy by allowing dark money to flood our elections, is now discussing
dismantling what is left of voting rights laws. |
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I also write you as your elder and as a priest for over 53 years
because I am deeply worried about your soul. We cannot forget your gutting the civil rights act in two
previous cases decided by SCOTUS with you as chief justice. |
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I presume you are witnessing, as I and 350 million other
Americans are, the tsunami of efforts in state legislatures around the
country to reinvent our election laws to assure that people of color, as in
the days of Jim Crow that preceded the civil rights voting act of 1965, find
it as difficult as possible to vote. Even the counting of the
votes by neutral voting clerks are being tossed aside in favor of state
legislature’s choosing their own vote counters who can actually overturn
election results that they don’t like. Given this destruction of American democracy and this affront to
everything the civil rights movement accomplished sixty years ago with all of
its martyrs and brave marchers and thousands who suffered beatings and
jailings and even death to bring about an advance in justice and democracy, I
wonder: Does it not rip your heart wide open and make your head
spin? This re-writing of what is left of our democracy? |
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As Supreme Court chief justice, you have been given great powers
and responsibilities. If you are seeing the news (on other than
Fox news, of course) and seeing what the rest of us are seeing, do you not
feel a deep, deep complicity in all this abuse of our democracy that is going
on in state houses? Is there remorse in your soul as you watch the
fruits of your labor at work in our country today? |
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I wonder where your conscience is
at. It is not enough, as a public figure with a public
responsibility to protect the constitution under which 350 million of us
live, that you go to a private confession to be forgiven sins like
this. You need to commit to a public undoing of your sins that truly
imperil the future of American democracy. |
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Maybe some sackcloth and ashes are in order, as was the case in
our religion 1700 years ago. That is the penance I would prescribe for you,
were you to come to confession to me. Or something equally
compelling. Like resigning from your job. I pray for you and your soul and for the future of democracy in
America, and that judges cleanse their souls of bigotry, racism and unjust
decision-making that turns the clock back and threatens to impact hundreds of
millions of people for generations to come. |
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Sincerely, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox |
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