Associate Supreme Court Samuel Alito
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump took office, a Republican federal judge in Alabama handed down an absolutely shocking opinion.

The legal claims in Lewis v. Bentley are, to be fair, a bit of a stretch. After the majority-black city council in Birmingham, Alabama, enacted an ordinance raising the minimum wage in Birmingham, the state legislature passed a law invalidating that ordinance. Every state lawmaker who supported this law was white, as was the governor who signed it. The plaintiffs in Lewis claim that this state law was enacted with racist intent — which would make it unconstitutional — rather than simply out of a desire to maintain conservative labor policy throughout the state.

Yet Judge R. David Proctor, a George W. Bush appointee, did not simply dismiss this case. He handed down an opinion that, if embraced by higher courts, would eviscerate virtually any civil rights plaintiff’s ability to challenge a facially neutral law that was enacted in order to harm people of color. When […]