What is the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment when it comes to dealing with race, discrimination, and class-based animus?

M.S. calls our attention to the daunting prospect of returning to the political process to seek access to driving privileges that she and others like her need in order to drive legally to their jobs, doctors, schools, and churches. That process, she asserts, "is an illusion for members of disfavored minority groups as long as their rights are subject to popular veto referend[a] infected by racial or other class-based animus." We do not deny the force of this argument, which has shaped our Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence for the last eighty years. See United States v. Carolene Prods. Co. , 304 U.S. 144, 153 n.4, 58 S.Ct. 778, 82 L.Ed. 1234 (1938). Nonetheless, the risk of improper animus infecting the political process does not confer upon the federal courts the power to assume

[902 F.3d 1091]

the functions of a legislature or the people in their legislative capacity.