Last night, the Democratic party was able to make significant inroads against Trumpism, flipping around 30 seats in the House and winning back control over the lower chamber of Congress.

But the forces of white supremacy were not defeated. Republicans strengthened their hold on the Senate, and won key gubernatorial races sprinkled throughout the former Confederacy.

Those victories were thanks, at least in part, to the successful GOP strategy of voter suppression. That strategy would not have been possible or nearly as effective without an assist from John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States.

Roberts’s “long game” of propping up white supremacy came to partial fruition last night. His decision in Shelby County v. Holder to declare racism over in the South proved to be a hurdle too great for Democrats to overcome.

In Shelby County, Roberts ignored 40 years of Supreme Court precedent and the clear intent of Congress to free Southern racists from the bother of having their voting laws “pre-cleared” by federal authorities. He wrote:

It was in the South that slavery was upheld by law until uprooted by the Civil War, that the reign of Jim Crow denied African-Americans the most basic freedoms, and that state and local governments worked tirelessly to disenfranchise citizens on the basis of race. The Court invoked that history—rightly so—in sustaining the disparate coverage of the Voting Rights Act in 1966. See Katzenbach, supra, at 308 (“The constitutional propriety of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 must be judged with reference to the historical experience which it reflects.”). But history did not end in 1965. By the time the Act was reauthorized in 2006, there had been 40 more years of it. In assessing the “current need[]” for a preclearance system that treats States differently from one another today, that history cannot be ignored. During that time, largely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers. And yet the coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs.

If you are inclined to be charitable to Roberts, you can say that he was merely too stupid to realize that gutting the Voting Rights Act would unleash the very forces he claimed victory over. I… am not inclined to be so charitable. John Roberts is an enemy of black people. He’s an enemy of our rights and dignity and equality.

Roberts knew exactly what he was doing when he gutted the Voting Rights Act. This is his handiwork:

“Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk: If the governor’s race had taken place in another country, the State Department would have questioned its legitimacy.” — The Atlantic

“Florida voters say they were blocked from polling site inside gated community” — The Hill

“Restricted voting hours for college students, translators barred from polling places in immigrant-heavy communities, an aging fleet of voting machines prone to botching ballots — those are just some of the problems Texans experienced so far during early voting.” — Texas Observer

Some of the voting problems in this country are a result of incompetence, but none of it is an accident. John Roberts is one of the only people in the country who can, more or less single-handedly, improve voting access for minorities and vulnerable people in America. He has instead chosen, time and again, to allow states to restrict access.

Perhaps you wouldn’t impugn bad motives to his actions if Roberts had a history of supporting the rights and equality of non-whites in other areas. But Roberts’s record is bare when it comes to helping minorities regain the power that he helps white people steal from them at the ballot box.

I’m therefore forced to conclude that Roberts consistently votes to disenfranchise non-white communities, because he knows it’s the best way for white people to keep their feet on the necks of those vulnerable communities. And that’s the way he wants it to stay.

The Supreme Court supported Jim Crow policies for a hundred years. It seems reducing minority political power to three-fifths of its actual number is the only original intent John Roberts really cares about.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.