Summary of the day so far: outrage as supreme court deals major blow to landmark voting law Today, the supreme court’s conservative majority struck down a major element of the Voting Rights Act which protects against racial discrimination in redistricting, in a ruling that paves the way for aggressive gerrymandering in states across the nation that could affect elections for years to come.
As my colleague Sam Levine notes, at the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that black voters are adequately represented.
In a 6-3 decision, split along partisan lines, the court struck down a majority-black congressional district in Louisiana, rendering ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
The ruling gives lawmakers permission to draw districting plans that weaken the influence of black and other minority voters. It comes as Donald Trump has pushed for red states to redraw their congressional maps in ways that would help Republicans win more seats in this year’s elections.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.
double quotation mark Under the court’s new view of section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. In fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.
Today’s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter. The decision here is about Louisiana’s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.
Reactions have poured in from lawmakers and civil rights groups, condemning the supreme court’s decision.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called the ruling “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act” and “a major setback for our nation”. The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities”, president Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.”
Former president Barack Obama said the ruling “effectively gut[s] a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act” and frees “state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias’”.
“This is a day of tremendous loss. It’s a day of loss for our democracy,” said Janai Nelson, who leads NAACP LDF and argued the case at the supreme court. “It’s a day of loss for critical protections for the right to vote that have served our multiracial democracy for over six decades. It’s a day of loss for Black voters in Louisiana who have counted on fair maps to allow them representation that they have been denied for their entire existence in that state.”
Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, called the ruling “a profound betrayal of the civil rights movement”. Today’s decision in Callais renders Section 2 moot as “it will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce in the vast majority of cases,” she said.
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling a “new blow” against the “sacred right to vote”. “The consequences will be felt across the country: fewer voices heard, fewer communities represented and a democracy diminished,” she said.
Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said, the “awful” decision represented “another step towards resurrecting the Jim Crow south”. The ruling, he said, “opens the floodgates for states across the south to redraw their Congressional districts and make voters of color essentially invisible in our democracy”. The court, he said, was “trying to give Republicans a leg up, an illegitimate leg up, in future elections”.
His House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, called the decision “corrupt”. “Voter suppression is a way of life for Donald Trump and far right extremists on the Supreme Court,” he said. “Republicans know they cannot win a free and fair election in November and so they are desperate to rig it. We will never let them succeed.”
Georgia senator Reverend Raphael Warnock said the decision “further ravaged” the Voting Rights Act and left the country “at a crossroads where politicians are picking their voters”. “Clearly, we are straying further from the core voting principles that helped create the diverse body that people see representing them today,” he said. “We must restore the Voting Rights Act and ban gerrymandering. Our democracy is on the line.”
Representative Troy Carter, whose predominately black congressional district encompasses New Orleans, said “the consequences of the high court’s decision will be “immediate and severe” and that Louisiana’s two majority-black congressional districts are now at risk of being dismantled. “Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, there is no evidence to suggest that Black voters in our state will be able to elect candidates of their choice,” he said.
New Orleans mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat who represents the largest city in Louisiana’s other predominantly black congressional district, said the supreme court’s ruling was “a step backward”. “Striking down a district that reflected diversity suppresses voices and weakens our democracy. We should be working to expand representation, not roll it back,” she said.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive director of Fair Fight Action, said the supreme court’s decision “guts” voting rights protection while “pretending to uphold it”. “It allows states, counties and cities to shield their discriminatory maps by claiming they are advancing their own partisan interests, ignoring that race and party are highly correlated in places across the country, particularly the south,” she said.
For more reaction to this landmark decision, please read my colleague Fabiola Cineas’s piece here: