A Supreme Court ruling legalized pretextual traffic stops of black drivers

Evidence

In 1996 the War on Drugs targeting black Americans got an assist from the Supreme Court when it declared open season on black drivers in Whren v. United States. The Court declared that the police could pull over any motorist anytime they violated the rules of the road. Given the frequency with which all drivers do not follow traffic laws, that decision legalized the racial profiling of black motorists. The crime of driving while black was created by a unanimous Supreme Court opinion written by the late Justice Scalia. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 419

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in how a unanimous Scalia opinion created ‘driving while black’ — a clean single fact about the legal mechanics of racial profiling.
• XREF: Connects to the War on Drugs history (Ehrlichman’s admissions referenced at 422) and to the broader ‘criminals are made not born’ thesis.