North Carolina Hires One Of America’s Most Expensive Attorneys To Defend Voter Suppression

https://thinkprogress.org/chutzpah-9503e5d93d51#.ehexjbv89

North Carolina has called in the big guns to try to restore a comprehensive voter suppression law that was gutted by a federal appeals court.

Paul Clement is one of the best lawyers in the nation. A former Solicitor General of the United States, Clement has spent much of the Obama administration transforming himself into a kind of Solicitor General of the Republican Party. Clement has argued cases seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act, preserve anti-gay marriage discrimination, defend harsh policies targeting immigrants, and preserve other voter suppression laws. His presence on a case is often a clear sign that the nation’s conservative establishment views it as a very high priority

He reportedly charges as much as $1,350 an hour for his services, although he’s been known to offer his government clients a bargain basement discount price of only $520 per hour!

The king’s ransom Clement is likely to collect from North Carolina’s taxpayers for his work on North Carolina v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP bought a legal document that probably offers the best defense that could be offered in favor of a law which, as the appeals court explains, was intentionally designed to make it harder for black people to vote. Nevertheless, Clement’s brief, styled as an “EMERGENCY APPLICATION TO RECALL AND STAY MANDATE OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT PENDING DISPOSITION OF A PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI,” reads like a document weirdly out of time. It is the sort of brief a Supreme Court advocate would file if Justice Antonin Scalia were still alive to provide the fifth vote to reinstate a voter suppression law. And it offers many arguments that are likely to antagonize the justices Clement needs to win over if he is to prevail.

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