The march for voting rights from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery in 1965 wasn’t meant to result in the passage of the Voting Rights Act. However then got here the horror of the scenes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the place police fractured the late John Lewis’ cranium and beat organizer Amelia Boynton unconscious, with a lot of the violence caught on digital camera. It swayed public opinion: President Lyndon Johnson delivered the voting rights invoice to Congress quickly after, and it turned legislation on Aug. 6, 1965.
“So, we will move step by step — often painfully but, I think, with clear vision — along the path toward American freedom,” Johnson stated upon signing the invoice.
Sixty years later, opponents of the Voting Rights Act have moved step-by-step, typically painfully, backwards on that path. Within the palms of conservative opponents of voting rights, the Supreme Courtroom has subjected the Voting Rights Act to loss of life by a thousand cuts. A few of these cuts have been small, resembling limiting how courts contemplate challenges introduced beneath the legislation. And a few have been giant, as within the 2013 resolution in Shelby County v. Holder that ended the requirement for sure states with histories of discrimination to submit election modifications and district maps to the Division of Justice for approval.
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However now the courtroom seems prepared for one last lower, to kill off the final remaining piece of the act that enables the individuals to problem racially discriminatory election practices.
On the night of Aug. 1, the courtroom launched its briefing query for rearguments within the case of Louisiana v. Callais, now known as Callais v. Landry. That query, which is supposed to instruct legal professionals on what concern is beneath debate, requested whether or not Louisiana’s “intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” This now units up arguments about whether or not Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the final remaining bulwark of the legislation post-Shelby County, is unconstitutional for requiring the usage of race in some situations of redistricting. The courtroom will hear arguments on Oct. 15, early sufficient for a call that would affect the 2026 midterms.
Brynn Anderson by way of Related Press
Part 2 bans electoral practices that result in “a denial or abridgment of the right … to vote” and that depart minority voters with “less opportunity … to participate in the political processes and to elect representatives of their choice” than white voters. Underneath the legislation, individuals can problem electoral practices they imagine violate that legislation in courtroom, whether or not the practices allegedly infringe on voter entry or deny illustration by way of gerrymandering.
A choice that declares Part 2 unconstitutional would depart the act toothless and threaten the existence of minority illustration, notably Black illustration, throughout the South.
“If this goes the way it looks like it’s going to go, it’s going to be Shelby County on steroids,” stated Nicholas Stephanopoulos, legislation professor at Harvard College. “This is going to be the single most catastrophic moment for minority voters since the 1870s or 1880s.”
Louisiana v. Callais first got here earlier than the courtroom in 2025 as a part of a yearslong sequence of Voting Rights Act instances stemming from the state’s 2021 congressional redistricting. The preliminary map adopted by the white- and Republican-dominated state authorities included only one Black-majority district out of seven, regardless of the Black inhabitants accounting for one-third of the state’s inhabitants. Black Louisianans introduced a Part 2 problem to the map, saying that it violated Part 2 by denying a second Black-majority seat when a cohesive and compact district may very well be drawn. They received earlier than a three-judge appeals courtroom panel.
To adjust to the ruling, the Republican-run state authorities redrew its maps to accommodate a second Black-majority district, but it surely additionally used the event to shore up districts held by Republicans Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow. The brand new district took an odd form, stretching 250 miles from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.
A bunch of “non-African American” plaintiffs then challenged the brand new district for being drawn with an excessive amount of of a reliance on race: Whereas the Voting Rights Act requires race to be considered in sure situations, Supreme Courtroom precedent states that the consideration of race can’t be the principle issue, or else it may violate the 14th Modification’s Equal Safety Clause.
Each the state of Louisiana and the unique Black plaintiffs, represented by the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund, discovered themselves on the identical aspect defending the brand new district map. Louisiana claimed that the traces for the brand new district have been drawn in response to politics, a permitted issue, not race. The Supreme Courtroom heard arguments in March, on the time centering on whether or not race or politics predominated. However it selected to not concern a ruling by the top of the time period. As a substitute, it introduced that it might rehear the case with a brand new query to come back. Now, we all know that query.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA by way of Getty Photos
Even elevating the query of whether or not Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act violates the 14th and fifteenth Amendments has set off alarm bells within the voting rights neighborhood. One huge cause why is due to what Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence for a really comparable case in 2022.
In Allen v. Milligan, the courtroom upheld a decrease courtroom ruling requiring Alabama to attract a second Black-majority district beneath Part 2 by a 5-4 vote. In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that, regardless of Congress’ reauthorization and updates to the Voting Rights Act, Part 2 can not proceed eternally into the long run. For the reason that act was amended in 1982, no matter discriminatory practices that it was meant to treatment are now not relevant 42 years later, he argued, so it should have an finish date because it “lacks any such salutary limiting principles.” Kavanaugh concurred, including hints of what arguments future instances may convey.
“The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”
Throughout oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais in March, Kavanaugh was nearly solely centered on this “temporal argument.”
“On equal protection law, the Court’s long said that race-based remedial action must have a logical end point, must be limited in time, must be a temporary matter. How does that principle apply to Section 2?” Kavanaugh requested.
And now the courtroom is re-hearing that case with the query of Part 2’s constitutionality raised.
“There’s a disagreement on the court and they want to use this case to resolve that disagreement,” stated Justin Levitt, a legislation professor at Loyola Legislation Faculty.
If Kavanaugh’s “temporal argument” is on the coronary heart of this disagreement, then there might now be 5 votes to both significantly restrict Part 2’s attain or kill it solely. That would have a cataclysmic affect on minority illustration in Congress, state legislatures, metropolis councils, county boards and some other workplace that depends on district line drawing.
“If this were to happen it would mean that scores and scores of districts that everyone thinks are now protected by Section 2 would no longer have any particular reason to exist the way they do,” Stephanopolous stated.
Simply have a look at what occurred after the courtroom disabled Part 5 of the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County resolution. Southern states, whose histories of discrimination required them to get modifications to voting insurance policies accepted earlier than enacting them, rapidly moved to enact restrictive voting guidelines. In North Carolina, a federal courtroom discovered that GOP lawmakers had “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision” and struck down their election legislation beneath Part 2.
Part 2 was then, and continues to be now, an obtainable instrument for plaintiffs to convey racial discrimination and dilution instances. In Shelby County, Roberts explicitly said that Part 2 remained a “permanent” recourse for racially discriminatory actions even when Part 5 could be disabled. When Alabama and Louisiana redrew their maps in 2021, courts pressured them to redraw them with further Black-majority seats.
“If this goes the way it looks like it’s going to go, it’s going to be Shelby County on steroids. This is going to be the single most catastrophic moment for minority voters since the 1870s or 1880s.”
– Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Harvard Legislation Faculty
However now the response to that Louisiana case threatens to finish what Roberts solely 12 years in the past known as “permanent.” If the courtroom finds Part 2 to be unconstitutional, it may result in a racial model of what the nation is presently seeing with partisan gerrymandering after the courtroom stated that would not be litigated in federal courts in its 2019 resolution in Rucho v. Frequent Trigger.
Black and Latino majority districts throughout the South and past may very well be worn out. Black congressional and state legislative illustration that boomed post-1965 may very well be fully reversed with the elimination of the 11 Black majority districts, all held by Democrats, throughout GOP-controlled Southern states and numerous Black majority state legislative districts. If the courtroom holds that the usage of race in drawing districts in any respect is unconstitutional, then these states would have free rein — even authorized justification — to get rid of these districts.
“We would quickly see a return to all white congressional delegations and in state legislative chambers and local maps in many places around the country,” Stephanopolous stated. “This would be a much bigger deal than Shelby County. It would apply nationwide.”
And whereas “the most likely outcome is a devastating outcome,” primarily based on the truth that the courtroom is re-hearing this case with the brand new constitutionality query, in response to Stephanopolous. It isn’t a foregone conclusion.
“This might be a very big deal at the end of the day, but it also might not,” Levitt stated.
There are any variety of off-ramps for the courtroom to absorb Louisiana v. Callais to keep away from hanging down Part 2. They might discover that politics predominated over race in drawing the brand new district, or that the state ought to merely redraw a brand new district that’s extra compact or prohibit the usage of Part 2 with out killing it solely.
However these have been, by and huge, potential choices obtainable for the justices once they first heard the case this spring. As a substitute, they selected to re-hear the case with a brand new query.
“They’ve made a hard case for themselves out of nothing,” Levitt stated.
The tip consequence stands out as the finish of the Voting Rights Act and the complete realization of consultant democracy it dropped at life over the previous 60 years. It will mark the nation stepping off that path towards American freedom.
